


Polaris

by garbagebreath



Category: IT - Stephen King, It - All Media Types
Genre: Addiction, Character Study, Eddie Kaspbrak is a Mess, Friends to Lovers, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Psychological Horror, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, Richie Tozier Being an Asshole, Richie Tozier Has ADHD, Richie Tozier Has Issues, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Relationships, not between any of the losers, the fanfiction formerly known as Midnight Finds Me Cryin’, they love each other very much
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-01-23 13:02:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18550303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garbagebreath/pseuds/garbagebreath
Summary: “I want you to promise not to do that again.” For no practical reason, Richie felt himself balk. ‘Oh Eddie my dear, I can’t promise you that. It’s not my promise to make, leave that up to Fate.’





	1. the creature walks among us

_”Fear not Death; for the house of your doom is set. And none may escape it.”_

_(Volunga Saga)_  

 

1.  

Wentworth Tozier had a largely apathetic outlook on life and death. Live your life however you please, as death is guaranteed. For as long as he had been Richie Tozier’s father (eleven years now, nearly twelve) his son had never seen him so much as shed a tear over the deceased. The funeral of Charles Tozier, Richie’s grandfather, solidified his feelings on the matter. As halfway through the priest’s homily, he flipped open his pack of Winston’s and began smoking. Heartless, he wasn’t. Dismissive, he very much was. To those unacquainted with Wentworth Tozier, he looked no less than incredibly disrespectful.  
  
“Why Went, everyone will think you’re a nutcase. Smoking at your own father’s funeral.” Margaret Tozier, otherwise known as _Maggie_ by Wentworth and _Mom_ by Richie, scolded as they walked away from the cemetery. Richie, whose attention had diverted to a shiny black crow sat atop a tombstone with a white mouse caught in it’s bloody maw, perked up at the change in conversation. His parents, shrouded in black funeral attire, looked more daunting than he had ever seen them with their backs turned away from him and their voices hushed. He had to quicken his pace to a trot to hear his father’s response.  
  
“Do _you_ think I’m a nutcase?” Wentworth was smiling, Richie could tell that much even standing behind him.  
  
“Of course I do, dear. That’s what worries me.”  
  
The crow was no longer sat on it’s tombstone when Richie took his eyes off of his parents, the small white mouse however, laid twitching before the spot the crow had dragged it to. _Damned bird didn’t even eat it, jus’ killed it._ Richie stopped walking to stare at the rat trembling in a bloody pool of intestines, it’s blinking eyes glowed the same shade of red as the matted fur; freshly blood covered from the predator tearing the flesh away from it’s body. Richie’s throat convulsed as he swallowed back the bile and the twisted laughter that competed in clawing it’s way out of his mouth. _Holy crow._ _  
_  
“Death isn’t a secret, my boy. It’s a promise. When your time comes, it comes.” Richie heard it all of his life, and the evening after Wentworth’s father was buried was no different. The porch swing Went was sat on swayed only barely in the light breeze the early summer days provided. His eyes, hidden behind a pair of circular reading glasses were glazed, and had Richie been any older he would have spotted the early effects of drinking alcohol for what it was. _“Que será, será.”_ _  
_  
Maggie, who was stood in the front doorway with her arms wrapped around a large pot of their soon to be dinner and an exasperated smile on her face, tsked lovingly at her husband. Ever the optimist, that was Margaret Tozier. If either of his parent’s held the key to every secret in the universe, it was his Mother. “Wentworth, are you trying to turn our boy into a cynic?”  
  
Wentworth grinned, cigarette smoke exhaled through the gaps in his pristine white teeth. _“Ah,_ he’s already a cynic.” With a burly hand, he waved away Maggie’s accusation. The half smoked cigarette dangled from his clean fingers, the fingers of a man who spent his weekdays working with his hands in the mouths of, and fixing the teeth of the townsfolk. “Every comedian should be.”  
  
Being complimented by his old man had always caused Richie to preen, and both of his parents chuckled at the way his blue eyes lit up from behind his clunky horn rimmed glasses. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, Went.” Maggie chastised, with her free hand she grabbed Wentworth’s cigarette from between his fingers and smashed it between the washed out brown boards of the front porch and the bottom of her black kitten heel pumps. “Always coming up with excuses for why you don’t need to quit smoking.”  
  
“Maggie, my love, if the smoking is what takes me; you’ll have the comfort of knowin’ it was meant to be.” Wentworth spread his hands in front of his body, giving Richie plenty of time to examine the callouses decorating his palms. Calluses which gave away his gradually maturing age, his experience. Both of which were synonymous with wisdom in a small town like Derry. As insightful as his father could be, Richie had seen naivety and the denial of outright truth in Derry’s adult population. He wasn’t foolish enough to believe that either of his parents were immune to that. _Oh, but his father was a cynical man._ He believed in a fated death the way that most people believed in a fated love.  
  
“Death is the most natural thing in this world, aside from perhaps, _birth.”_ Wentworth would say through his thick Maine drawl, and perhaps it was inappropriate to broach such a topic with a child as young as Richie. Perhaps, Wentworth hit the bottle more than he let on. “Being in love is a leisure activity, a temporary distraction from the unnerving certainty that you will one day meet Death.”  
  
That topic wasn’t often breached within the Tozier household, as Maggie hated that far more than she hated her husband’s spiels on fated death. Years later, only days after his father had died of a lung consuming cancer _(as he was fated to, Richie supposed)_ his mother had laughed and said, “Oh what a critic he was.” She shook her head, her hands were busied with washing the last few dishes Wentworth had left for her to clean. Dishes she refused to let Richie touch. “There was nothing more natural to me, than falling in love with him.”  
  
The Barrens had a very distinct smell; a combination of stale rain puddles and the sewer system those very puddles mingled with. When it rained, the smell was washed away into the Kenduskeag waters, if only temporarily. Mud slipped between Richie’s frail fingers as he splashed face first into a particularly thick mud puddle that grabbed onto one of his ratty tennis shoes and wouldn’t let go. A deep guttural roar echoed through the trees, and if Richie didn’t know any better, he would have assumed it thunder.  
  
In a haste, Richie slid his foot out of his slowly sinking shoe and scrambled onto his hands and knees atop the thick root of a pine tree that jutted from the wet ground. He only had seconds to think, less than that, before he would be met with the death he was surely promised. He wasn’t fool enough to believe Big Bill Denbrough would come pedaling through the mud on his huge silver bike and rescue him like some royal knight with hair the color of fire, not again.  
  
Venturing into the Barrens alone was his mistake, and he alone had to find a way to get out of it. As he searched his person for sneezing powder or a whoopie cushion, his father’s macabre words began ringing in his ears.  
  
_“Death isn’t a secret, it’s a promise.”_ _  
_  
Would Wentworth cry, when the town Sheriff inevitably found the mangled corpse of his son floating in the Canal? Or would he grimace at the missing limbs and at the maggots occupying them, bitter in his grief, and shrug away the strangled sobbing coming from his wife. “Ah Maggie, stop that crying now.” He would sigh, and lean down to brush the bloody brown popcorn curls off of his son’s forehead. “I toldja, didn’t I?”  
  
Richie supposed that thought was as grim as it was inaccurate. His father may be a cynic, but he wasn’t heartless. He just believed in fate the way some believe in a God. Such as his mother, who would be torn to pieces over her son’s death, though she may plague his funeral with well meaning words about how he’s in a better place. Perhaps Richie was becoming cynical, but he didn’t think his father was entirely to blame. If his mother looked in the face of hell the way he had, she would have a hard time believing in heaven too.  
  
His hand closed around the wet box of matches in his front pocket right as the monster broke through the nannyberry bushes and fallen pine tree branches to come to a stop in the mud puddle that had eaten Richie’s tennis shoe. A real wolf wouldn’t be able to make it across the Barrens easily, not without slipping and sliding in the rain the way Richie had. But this wasn’t a _real_ wolf, this wasn’t even a real werewolf.  
  
The werewolf was snarling, with gleaming white teeth bared and foamy spittle dripping from it’s blood caked maw to fall to the ground below it’s feet. In the all encompassing darkness of the forest surrounding the Barrens, the eyes of the wolf shone like two gleaming citrine gems. Ferocious as they were mesmerizing. It looked nothing like the hoaky movie monster that made appearances in Richie’s nightmares. _God, it looked real._ It wasn’t, _it wasn’t real._ Richie had to remind himself of that.  
  
“Git back! _Git back,_ y’hear! ‘Less yer wantin’ a face fulla sneezin’ powder!” The monster didn’t so much as flinch at his shaky warning, as if the horrid thing could sense that Richie was lying in his shoddy Officer Nell impression. It’s heavy brown paws, coated in muck and leaves, began to slosh through the puddle towards the child. It advanced, with lips pulled back into a crude sneer. It could almost be described as a grin, as much as a monster could grin. The elongated white teeth, dripping with blood and saliva made the stories Richie heard about Georgie Denbrough’s missing arm and Eddie Corcoran’s torn to bits body all the more real.  
  
Poor Eddie Corcoran, whose younger brother Dorsey Corcoran died just weeks before himself in a way that was no less gruesome. Just after Eddie’s death, Richie spotted the Corcoran’s stepfather at the Derry pharmacy, putting on a strained grimace every time someone stepped forward to give him their condolences while he picked up a box of bandages, likely to cover the cuts all over his knuckles.  
  
The other adults didn’t seem to see those cuts, and Richie never stepped forward to give his condolences.  
  
“Two for the price of one.” Stan Uris had mumbled, his brown eyes were murky as they stared at the man’s hands. Richie’s skin crawled, but he didn’t let it show. He choked out a surprised chortle.  
  
“Gee Stanley.” Eddie Kaspbrak, the reason the three of them were in the pharmacy to begin with, groaned. His nose, pointy at the end, was scrunched distastefully at the boy who was only mere centimeters taller than himself. “That’s… ghastly.”  
  
_It sure is, Eddie my dear._ Richie thought, his eyes followed the man who shoved his hands into the pockets of his Levi jeans every time someone came near, although there was no need. The image of Richard Macklin, crouched atop the headstone of little Dorsey with Eddie Corcoran clenched between his bloody fists like the beady eyed crow holding the defenseless mouse flickered behind Richie’s closed eyes each time he blinked. Not wanting Stan to explain his joke (if it could even be called that) any further, he let his jaw fall shut with a soft click and remained silent.  
  
That’s what was on Richie’s mind as he stared into the glowing orange eyes of the teenage werewolf, inaudibly. “He killed Eddie’s brother.” That’s what Stan would have said in his matter of fact way, if Eddie or Richie had so much as asked. “And he’s probably glad that Eddie is dead too.” He didn’t, which was a relief. Though, that didn’t stop Eddie Kaspbrak from casting his anxious eyes onto the Corcorans’ stepfather, looking paler than usual.  
  
Richie didn’t want to die, and tempt fate the way he could have tempted Stan into explaining in calm fashion the thing that every Derry child with one eye and half sense was thinking, so he remained silent.

  
The werewolf’s breath was hot, and Richie gagged at the foul stank of shit wafting into his face. If his matches weren’t coated with muck and rainwater, he could start a forest fire with the heavy breathing coming from the monster. He choked back the unpleasant chortle that his delirious mind was trying to force out of him. Maybe he would have the sweet relief of going insane before the monster could kill him. Would fate be that forgiving? Forgiving enough to let him lose his mind before he was torn to shreds by the devil he couldn’t outrun? From the way old Went Tozier spoke of fate, he doubted it.

A flash of something small and gray zipped through the rain, brushing just by Richie’s head to whip his popcorn curls off of his forehead and gently graze the helix of his ear. _A silver bullet,_ his mind buzzed through the delirious haze of his own fear. The gray projectile landed with a thud against the snout of the beast, before clattering against the mud between it’s target and Richie Tozier’s feet. _That ain’t no bullet._ Sinking into the mud alongside his stolen tennis shoe was an aspirator. Ironically, Richie felt his breath catch. _Lawks-a-mussy, now me an’ Eds are gonna get Corcoran’ed._

By some miracle, and by God that’s what Eddie Kaspbrak was, the teenage werewolf was no longer stalking forward with the slow pace of a hungry predator. Rather, the monster had fallen atop the mud with his snout placed between his heavy paws. In wonderment, and a delayed shock, Richie googled at the monster through his rain blurred coke bottle lenses.

_“Jesus Richie, get off of your ass!”_

He didn’t need any further prodding after that, certainly not with his view of the hateful orange eyes hidden behind brown tufts of fur. Fur that was now splattered with white paint. Richie didn’t intend on sticking around to see if the monster’s large snout would become round and red. There was a brief moment in his scramble to stand that he feared one of his legs would twist itself around a tree branch and he would be sent sprawling back into the soaked mud with a broken leg, mangled and useless. A sure guarantee that he would become werewolf food. Mercifully, he didn’t.

With renowned confidence that he was going to make it out of the Barrens alive _(take that Pops - I looked death right in her ugly face and_ skee _daddled)_ he centered his gaze on the retreating yellow shirt that covered Eddie Kaspbrak’s thin back and began to run.

That yellow shirt never got so far away that Richie couldn’t see it, but it wouldn’t have mattered if it had. The path back to Kansas street was set by the small navy blue Keds on Eddie’s feet, and his footprints laid imprinted in the mud even as the rain beat the ground. He wasn’t dying tonight; of that, Richie was certain. When he got close enough to grab ahold of Eddie’s arm, the sickly boy didn’t so much as flinch. He simply turned his head to stare up at Richie with an unfamiliar look of self assuredness that masked the more familiar cloud of doubt shadowing his calf eyes.

He could have outrun Richie, if he was trying to. This, after all, was a boy who Richie had spent many hours playing cops and robbers with in the very swamp they were, presently, running for their lives through. _Eddie sure can_ run _awright._ He thought absentmindedly. _He’s just walkin’ the walk, I’ma talkin’ the talk._

It wasn’t until they reached Bassey Park that Eddie came to a shuddering halt, and Richie mirrored his example. The rasping of their combined breaths resembled the whirring of an old, poorly kept motor, rather than two eleven year old boys out of breath from a run through the woods. Eddie Kaspbrak’s knees buckled underneath him before he could grab ahold of the paint chipped boot Paul Bunyan adorned. He landed heavily and flatly atop his palms, and Richie winced at the agonized caw that followed the jarring of his broken arm.

Eddie was wheezing, thinly. His throat sounded as if it was thinner than a needle as he huffed and puffed into the evening rain, condensation clouds obscured the lower half of his face with every rapid exhale. Richie’s own breathing was raw, and strained. Not whistling, like Eddie’s, but ragged and painful all the same. “You really saved my ass back there, Eds.” He haggardly croaked, and winced in turn at the unpleasant sound and feel of it. Eddie Kaspbrak only stared at his thin fingers, still stretched flatly against the dirt in front of Paul Bunyan. His lack of a response, snappy or otherwise, had Richie shifting uncomfortably on his sock covered heels _(God knows when and where he lost the second shoe. Somewhere on Kansas street, most likely, though it was_ unlikely _he would ever see either shoe ever again)_ hesitantly, he reached his hand out for Eddie to grab with his good arm. “Need anything? A hand? Mouth to mouth?”

Eddie glanced up at Richie, his eyebrows drawn together to form a thick crease just above the bridge of his nose. His entire body was quaking from the chill of rainwater, which trickled down his pale face and slid past his bluing lips and down his jaw. “You owe me an inhaler.” Eddie blinked at Richie’s outstretched hand, his muddy eyes drifted from his palm to his bloodied knuckles. All of which were covered and caked in mud, and he retched aloud. “Holy God I think ‘m gonna be sick.”

Richie clicked his tongue sympathetically as Eddie angled his face towards the ground and dry heaved.

“Over a little blood ‘n mud?” Teasingly, he wiggled his fingers before Eddie’s eyes. Despite the direct drizzle of rain atop his hand, the thick grime coating his knuckles and dirtying his fingernails stubbornly stayed put under the onslaught of falling water. Eddie, whose complexion was typically fair, became pallid green. With a scowl, he batted Richie’s hand away. “Tough crowd I shee… You thinkin’ you need a stretcher shweetheart?”

“Bill told you not to go into the Barrens alone.” Eddie moaned morosely, his voice completely bulldozing over Richie and his shitty Humphrey Bogart impression. _Call it a works in progress._

A tad defensive, Richie hummed questioningly. “On the contraire, I remember him telling the _both_ of us not to go into the Barrens alone.” Bewildered, Eddie whipped his head up, when he met Richie’s eyes with his own he turned his face away with an embarrassed flush. To smooth out the oncoming awkwardness that began to brew in the air, Richie bent his body forward to pinch at Eddie’s closest cheek with his cleanest hand. Regardless, Eddie still gagged. “Now shee here, we aren’t making a habit of dishobeying the bossh man, don’t shtart your fretting tootsh. It’sh a bad color on you.”

Unresponsive, Eddie remained seated on the ground, looking anywhere as long as he didn’t have to look at Richie’s face. In particular, his eyes lingered on the looming form of Paul Bunyan. As if there was anything to look at. Richie came to the quick assumption that Eddie’s avoidance of eye contact was his own way of sorting out his thoughts, so he let his own gaze drift from the boy who saved his life to the sky shrouded with clouds.

The storm was moving Southwest, albeit slowly. With every distant bolt of lightning, Richie felt as if he could see the storm moving farther and farther away. In fact, if he squinted he was sure he would be able to see the brief flash of light that illuminated the small town of Jerusalem’s Lot miles away from Derry.

The street lights flickered to life, the one nearest Bassey Park buzzed much like the cicadas hiding within the trees. With the light on and the rain reduced to nothing but a slow trickle, Richie could look around in every direction and see how _alone_ they were. A constant chill traveled up and down his spine, and when Eddie spoke again he nearly jumped out of his skin.

“You could have died.” Eddie finally settled on, his breathing was slow and measured and _utterly calm._ He paused, before he looked fixedly up at Richie, no longer mesmerized by the hideous display that Bunyan made in the center of Derry’s one and only park. “You almost…” He flushed again, but his gaze didn’t waver. “You almost fucking _died.”_

“What would you like me to say, Eddie Spaghetti?” He responded patiently, and rubbed the end of his long nose with a bloody knuckle, much to Eddie’s chagrin.

“I want you to promise not to do that again.”

For no practical reason, Richie felt himself balk. _Oh Eddie my dear, I can’t promise you that. It’s not my promise to make, leave that up to Fate._ He grinned, and Eddie stared up at him with that unflinching certainty on his face. “Is that all you ask, Eddie my love?” Eddie nodded. “Shure thing shweetheart. Now, how’sh about I write you that check for a shiny new ashpirator.”

“You better.” Eddie relaxed minutely, the corners of his lips began to lift in that nervous and slight way that Richie had grown so accustomed to over the course of their shared summer. He stood, and Richie on instinct jerked out an arm to wrap around Eddie’s waist in the case that he needed to be steadied. He didn’t, and with a disparaging sigh he swatted Richie’s arm away for the second time that day. “Are you telling Bill about this?” Eddie asked, suddenly hesitant and preoccupied as he brushed off the mud from his wet clothes to the best of his ability.

“I won’t if you don’t.”

“Then I won’t.” Eddie confirmed, nodding his head with one final brush to the seat of his pants. There was a moment of hesitance between them, one that was amplified by the nervous and observant gaze Eddie trained on Richie. Decidedly, the asthmatic huffed out a breath and said; “I’m spending the night at your house.”

“Okay.” Richie agreed instantly; a bit floored that Eddie _wanted_ to stay with him, but moreso relieved that he wouldn’t have to walk home by himself. Or spend his night in the nightmarish prison his bedroom had become ever since October of 1957. The sky brightened as the clouds made their final departure, and the last of the rain was carried away with them. That suppressed fear remerged as the full moon shined down on Bassey Park, the silver light only served to make him feel as if he was being watched. His throat contracted with the effort not to whimper aloud as the memory of the Teenage Werewolf’s maw inching forward reappeared in his mind.

_Dear God there’s still blood on my legs. There’s still_ blood _on my legs that came from it’s foul mouth. It was dripping on me and I just_ let it.

The abrupt repulsion, and the sudden desire to take a shower had Richie longing for his bicycle. “Mrs. K won’t be worried?”

“So what if she is?” Eddie retorted quickly, perhaps too quickly. His eyes flitted away from Richie’s face, but he couldn’t very well hide the anxiety that thinned his lips. “She’ll be fine.” He said gentler, reassuring himself as much as he was Richie. “I told her I was staying at Bill’s. That’s where I was going, you know, before I heard…”

He gestured, sheepishly towards the Barrens. His affection for Eddie hit him all at once like a wave, and he felt a goofy grin stretching at his mouth. “Oh, _mah hero.”_ Richie crowed in his Southern Belle voice. The sheepish hesitance on Eddie’s face immediately dropped into an unamused frown. “Ain’t you just the _sweetest thing?_ Comin’ to my rescue when you heard me just a’screamin’ for help from a brave man like you.”

“I thought I was coming to the rescue of a girl, actually.” Richie guffawed, and he grabbed Eddie around the neck to ruffle his short wet hair with a muddy hand. Eddie shoved him off with an indignant squak, ignoring the crowing from Richie about _Eds getting off a good one._ He fixed his hair, slowly, and under his breath he added; “It’s what Bill would have done. What any of you would have done.”

Something akin to surprise flashed across Richie’s amused face, and he tilted his head comically at Eddie. “You think I’m brave enough to jump in between some poor innocent soul and that creature that almost tore me in half?”

“I think you’re dumb enough to try it.” Eddie amended, and then with a serious sort of bashfulness, he glanced back up at Richie. “You’re all a lot braver than I am.”

_But I’m not._

“You kidding, Eds?” Richie laughed in disbelief, he didn’t realize they were walking towards his house together until his elbow knocked against the hypochondriac’s swinging arm. “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen! You shoulda seen me and Bill in Neibolt, running and screaming like a couple of girls who’d just seen a spider.”

Eddie giggled, and his laugh rang like a windchime down the empty street. “Bill did _not_ scream like a girl.”

“I guess you’re right.” Richie nodded, solemnly. “He screamed like a _little girl.”_

Their combined laughter boomed against the rain damp street, it bounced from the sidewalks to the gutters and into the woods. Had any adults been out in the storm’s aftermath to hear them, they would have scoffed and slammed their front door on the way back inside. To their own personal peace and quiet. _“Goddamned kids. Out after curfew… wouldn’t be much of a surprise if they came up missing by tomorrow. ‘Least I wouldn’t have to hear anymore of that disruptive shit.”_

If Eddie was curious as to why Richie was out after curfew roaming the Barrens, he never voiced his concerns. Which was, in Richie’s opinion, a good thing. Answering those questions that lingered on that midsummer night seemed like an impossibility, as he was certain he didn’t have any answers. At least, none that would satisfy Eddie. _‘So why were you in the Barrens?’ ‘Fuck if I know, Eds. That’s just Richie Tozier for ya. Anything for a laugh. That’s Richie Tozier alright, har har har.’_

Derry, Maine used to be home to one male teacher. He was, at the time, the only male teacher in Derry, and conceivably, he was the only male teacher in the entire state of Maine. The man, who went by the name Mr. Redman, made a regular appearance in town gossip. As one would expect in a town where rumors spread fast. He was Richie Tozier’s teacher in the fourth grade, and would have been for a lot longer, had he not quit his job before winter break. Frankly, Richie idolized the man, and in later years he discovered that the idolization may have come from the likeness between Mr. Redman and ol’ Mr. Tozier. The first, and only, time that Richie ran into Mr. Redman outside of school was after a fight between himself and Henry Bowers.  
  
A fight that, predictably, ended with a face full of dirt and broken nose on Richie’s end, and some threatening words from an unharmed Henry Bowers. Spread eagle on the grassless ground behind the Aladdin theatre is how Mr. Redman found him; his face smeared with blood, snot and dirt.  
  
He was alerted to the man’s presence when a shadow cast over him, he blinked his eyes open to the view of his teacher blocking out the sun as he loomed over Richie’s pathetic form. The sun formed a sort of yellow ring around the silhouette of Mr. Redman, and Richie giggled at the sight of it. _“Jesus?_ ‘s that you?”  
  
The silhouette sighed dejectedly, and held up Richie’s mangled glasses that he had lost somewhere in the ruckus. Every crack in the lenses reflected the orange glow of the sun, and Richie blinked tiredly every time the blinding light hit his eyes. “Found these out front.” Mr. Redman drawled, he tossed the glasses so they landed atop Richie’s stomach. “Knew it had to be you.”  
  
“Why’d you bother?” Richie hummed, he let his head fall back against the dirt. His eyes, blurry without the visual assistance his glasses provided, stared unseeingly up at the blue sky. “You’re off duty, boss.”  
  
“What happened, Richie?” Mr. Redman crouched down, and the sun was in his face once again. Richie scrunched up his face, which made his broken nose hurt like hell, and let his eyes fall shut again. He brought his hands up, as dirty and as bloody as they were, and pressed the heels of his palms flat against his closed eyes. Realizing he wasn’t going to get an answer out of Richie, his teacher prodded on. “Was it that group of boys always bullying on the younger kids?”  
  
“I deserved it.” Richie shrugged, he let his arms fall back limply at his sides. “I did the talkin’ they did the stompin’.”  
  
Mr. Redman wasn’t a man known for rebuking, even when it came to the likes of Richie Tozier. But on that particular day, less than a month before the man would be run out of town by angry townsfolk who had enough of their kids being taught by the strange man who lived by himself in poor town, he scolded the hell out of his smartest student. In that honest, frank way that didn’t really seem like chastising as it was. “Now son, those boys don’t have no business hitting you. But  that don’t mean you should instigate them into it.” Had Richie’s eyes been open, he would have seen the displeased lour on Mr. Redman’s face. “You’re damn near suicidal kid, I’ll tell you that. Keep yourself out of trouble, _y’hear?_ Or else it might be a lot worse than a broken nose next time.”  
  
Mr. Redman set his nose back in place, pulled a handkerchief out of the pocket of his jeans for Richie to wipe his face off with, and was on his merry way. For a while, Richie laid on the ground with a glower settling deep into his frown lines. _Why should I be feeling guilty, huh?_ _It‘s not like I broke my own nose. Bowers woulda taken care of that no matter what I said to instigate him._ _  
_  
The guilt he felt then, well, it was damn similar to the guilt worming it’s way through his stomach as Eddie Kaspbrak wiped his knuckles with the rubbing alcohol he found under Maggie Tozier’s sink. _‘E. Coli, Richie, I’ve already told you about this. First it takes your kidneys, then it takes the rest of you. That’s what my Ma told me.’_  
  
That gnawing guilt manifested in his mind as the crow with blank black eyes, a ring of red surrounding those empty pits that hardly passed for eyes. It never scared him when it appeared in his dreams, it just... stared. In those dreams he knew that the crow was his death, and that he was the wide eyed mouse that would soon be gobbled in it’s maw. The crow was the Teenage Werewolf. It was Pennywise. It was Henry Bowers. It was the bitter bite of alcohol he began to crave in his college years, and longed for every single year he was alive after he quit. The mouse was Richie Tozier. And when all was said and done, so was the crow.


	2. the incredible shrinking man

_“All the world's a stage;_ _and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.”_

_(Sèan O’Casey)_

 

1.

His hands were tinged red underneath the boiling stream of hot faucet water that he was using to scrub his skin raw. The smell of bar soap combined with the warm steam that wafted from the faucet into his face was overwhelming, he began to feel lightheaded inside the tiny bathroom. Out of breath. The guest bathroom, much like the bedroom connected to it, was small and quaint. The latrine was lidless, and the paper roll sat on the toilet tank was dry and yellowing. Aside from the aging toilet paper, the bathroom was immaculate. Exceptionally so; cleanly to the point that it‘s lack of usage was obvious. No bathroom with a constant stream of human traffic could remain pristine for long.  
  
It was a subtle disconnect from the rest of the Hanlon home, which had all of the charm of a house _lived in._ The old farmhouse had a warmth to it, a homely feel that you could only get from a house which held a happy family. The guest bedroom was the one room in the entire house which felt as vacant as it looked, and with every day Eddie Kaspbrak stayed in it, he could never make it come alive the way the Hanlon family made their entire house feel like a warm and welcoming beacon. Inside of the home, he felt like a black and white television program on a color tv.  
  
Living in the drab guest bedroom had him feeling equal parts nostalgic and bitter, as the little barren room reminded him so very much of his childhood home. _I never lived in that damn house._  Eddie Kaspbrak speculated as he cleaned nonexistent dirt from his fingernails. _Same way no one has ever lived in this damn room._

“Don’t be a stranger.” Will Hanlon spoke to him, the very first night he stayed on the farm. His voice was gruff from years of cigarette smoking, but it retained it’s kindness, it remained welcoming. He wasn’t nearly as tall as Eddie remembered from childhood memory, nor was he burly like farmers are typically expected to be. Though, by looking at him, it was clear that he was a man who spent his entire life working hard and working happy. He clapped a calloused hand down on Eddie’s shoulder, a comforting albeit firm motion, and offered him a crooked smile that deepened the smile lines in his cheeks. He resembled Mike most when he smiled. “You stay as long as you want. How’s that?”

  
Generous. The Hanlon’s were a generous people, and guilt manifested inside of Eddie as he realized how effortlessly he would take Will up on that offer. How quickly he would extend his stay if they so much as asked. He nodded sheepishly, giving a small smile that felt fraudulent on his face to Mike Hanlon’s father. “I’ll stay until Mike gets sick of me, Mr. Hanlon.”  
  
Will Hanlon’s laugh was warm, and all encompassing. It brightened his face and crinkled his eyes, it was contagious. Eddie’s own smile began to feel genuine, the fraudulence faded with every hearty chuckle from the older man. He caught Mike Hanlon’s eye in that moment, the relief on his best friend’s face stilted him. “That boy? He couldn’t get sick of you if he tried, son.“ _Oh, I doubt that._ Eddie’s mind provided with self deprecating cynicism. “S’pose he would offer up this house to the whole lot of you kids if you so much as asked.”  
  
Mike, the goddamn patron saint of patience, didn’t even attempt to appear embarrassed. He simply smiled up at his old man and shrugged, caught red handed. “S’pose I would. How many twenty somethings do you think can fit in the basement, Dad?”

The saint in question was seated on the hardwood floor of the guest bedroom playing a quiet game of solitaire when Eddie finally stepped out of the bathroom, freshly cleaned hands still pink from the hot water assault. The paneled door shut with a soft click behind Eddie, and a soft smile found it’s way on to Mike Hanlon’s face. Just like that, the little black and white room filled with color.  
  
“Were you waiting on me?” Eddie asked, hesitantly and a bit horrified.  
  
He would have at least, attempted to hurry, had he known he would find Mike sitting calmly on his bedroom floor with a deck of cards. _Waiting for him._ _  
_  
“Came to tell you my Mom is making breakfast.” Mike had his eyes on the game he was playing as he spoke, but his words were slow. Contemplative, even. The asthmatic presumed Mike heard the anxiety which crept it’s way into the question Eddie asked, he had never been very good at nonchalance. And Hanlon’s, alongside their generosity, were a perceptive bunch. With his keen brown eyes, Mike glanced up at Eddie and smiled still. “You didn’t fall in, did you?”  
  
The tension fell from his shoulders, and he allowed his dry gaze to meet Mike’s amused one. “Funny.” He wasn’t as hesitant about plopping down on the hardwood across from Mike and his scattered playing cards, he crossed his thin legs in a sort of mockery of grade school students. For a moment, a brief and comfortable moment, he just watched the card game unfold with unseeing eyes. A thought occurred to him. “You didn’t have to wait up on me.”  
  
Mike stopped, and looked up at Eddie with a curious flick of his dark eyebrows. “You didn’t.” Eddie insisted, delighted. “I’m sure you would rather be down there, stealing bacon when Mrs. Hanlon isn’t looking.”  
  
Eddie was dodging the question, the one he really wanted to ask. The _‘why are you waiting up for me, Mike?’_ Mike, who was as smart as he was sly, dodged the unspoken question with that faux innocent lip tilt. “I don’t eat bacon.” He paused, and moved around a few cards. “Or any meat, for that matter.”  
  
Eddie wasn’t proud in admitting that he fell for the conversational switch bait Mike laid out.  
  
“You live on a farm.” Eddie pointed out, appalled. The man sitting across from him laughed, bright as ever, and looked up at Eddie in the fond way that you would a confused child. It didn’t feel condescending, when Mike gave him that look.  
  
“All the more reason to _not_ eat meat.” Mike, to his credit, withheld the repulsed frown which threatened to tug his lips down. “Word of advice, if you _like_ bacon, I’d suggest staying away from the...” He gestured vaguely towards the barn out back with a card clutched between his fingers. A seven of hearts. “Pig slaughtering. It can get pretty Charlotte’s Web around here.”  
  
Woefully, and despite having not actually been witness to any pigs being slaughtered, Eddie felt his stomach roll.  
  
Mike, not completely oblivious to Eddie’s sudden bout of illness, tapped his fingers against the wood floor quietly. “You didn’t show up for dinner last night.” It was the answer to Eddie’s unspoken inquiry, his explanation was perhaps an apology for the pallid look that paled his best friend’s face. Though, he didn’t look very sorry about the possibility of turning Eddie off of bacon. At least for a while. “Dad made a joke; that I should coerce you into joining us downstairs this morning. But something is telling me you don’t need a lot of coercion.”  
  
Eddie’s shoulders tightened once more, and he mourned for the massage his tense shoulders desperately needed after twenty one years of stress weighing them down. “I would have gone. Really, I would have.” The oncoming but lingered in the air, and he steadfastly ignored the focused stare Mike Hanlon had trained on him. He kept his own eyes down, locked on the hardwood floor they were sharing. “I started thinking-”  
  
_“There’s_ the problem.” Mike teased, realization in his voice. Eddie felt even guiltier at the understanding smile he was met with. “Anyone ever tell you you think too much?”  
  
“Believe it or not, that’s a new one.” Eddie huffed, trying and failing to appear offended. He picked at the shoelaces on his Keds, the fraying material was hardly keeping his shoes together these days. He squirmed uncomfortably under Mike’s intense stare, knowing that he was waiting for an explanation from Eddie. “Your parents have been... very kind to me.” His throat felt tight, and he swallowed roughly. He prayed to a God he didn’t believe in that he wouldn’t cry, not again. _“You_ have been so kind to me. You say it’s no problem, me being here but, I’m sleeping in your house. I’m eating your food. Christ I might as well be wearing your clothes.”  
  
He chanced a glance up at Mike, and felt his throat constrict even further at the pained frown twisting his best friend’s handsome face. “I’m not meaning to be... but I’m a _burden.”_ Eddie shook his head quickly, imperceptibly almost, and clenched his jaw. “I didn’t mean to skip dinner. I swear I didn’t, Mikey.”  
  
The extended silence lingering between them turned the air stagnant. Eddie kept his attention on his shoelaces, on the cards scattered across his bedroom floor, on Mike Hanlon’s fingers which kept their steady rhythm tapping against the wood. As long as he didn’t have to look at the terse expression which looked unnatural on Mike. It couldn’t have been more than seconds, before Mike laughed. Not warm and inviting the way his laugh so often was, but sad and hurt. Eddie winced at the sound. “Here I thought you just had a stomachache.” Eddie let his eyes drift back up to Mike’s face, the man was shaking his head and when Eddie’s eyes met his he clicked his tongue, not reprimanding. “You’re not a burden. I’m sorry, Eddie.”  
  
“You don’t have to apologize.”  
  
“I’m sorry that I didn’t realize you felt burdensome.” Mike clarified. _The patron saint of patience, that was Mike Hanlon._ “My parents weren’t joking, you know. When they said you could stay as long as you want.”  
  
He hadn’t known that. Mike _(perceptive, so perceptive)_ smiled gently, similar to his father’s welcoming grin, which served to ease some of the hesitance building in his chest. The hesitance which made his inhaler all the more desirable. He was teasing, he was reassuring, he was patient, he was still Mike. “They aren’t like other adults.”  
  
_That,_ Eddie _had_ known. Even as a child he trusted Mike Hanlon’s parents more than most, but there was always a but. Adults he respected, they were rare. Rarer even, were adults he liked. Isn’t _that_ why he didn’t want to overstay his welcome? Test his luck with the last few adults he had grown to care for? But the look in Mike’s kind brown eyes had all of the hope that his voice did when he first asked Eddie to stay with him over the summer. A lifetime ago, when he was packing up his dorm at NYU and dreading the three months in Pennsylvania with his mother, Sonia Kaspbrak.  
  
_“Eddie-Bear. You need someone to take care of you, you always have. I know you’ve convinced yourself Mike Hanlon won’t be taking care of you - but isn’t he? Isn’t he, Eddie-Bear?”_ _  
_

“I know.” Eddie breathed, reserved and quiet in his admission. “I know.”

Whatever it was Mike was preparing to respond with, was cut off the moment Will Hanlon opened the door. The room, immediately, was assaulted with a wave of smells. Most notably, eggs and bacon. Eddie’s stomach rolled for the second time that morning, regretfully. Silently, he hoped Mr. Hanlon hadn’t walked in to invite the two of them to breakfast. He wasn’t sure he would be able to squash his nausea at the oncoming images of pig blood. He wasn’t there to discuss breakfast, at least, Eddie didn’t think he was. Not with the puzzled look that pulled at his brows, and the nervous way he tapped his fingers against the doorframe. A family habit, that finger tapping.  
  
“Either of you boys invite anyone here last night?” There wasn’t accusation in his voice, just terse befuddlement.  
  
“Why?” Mike’s voice was slow, but it didn’t hide the tightness his voice suddenly took on.  There was something familiar, about the way Mike sounded. Fearful and determined; Eddie was sure the last time he heard Mike sound like that was ten years ago.  
  
_‘It’s been quiet for almost a decade, Eddie.’_ Mike had reassured over the phone, his voice tinny on the office phone at New York University. _‘It’s not coming back. Not this year.’_ _  
_  
That reassurance, much like the phone call, was a lifetime ago.  
  
Will Hanlon, albeit minutely, let himself relax his shoulders at the sudden tone in Mike’s voice. “You ain’t in trouble, don’t you worry about that.” He tried his own hand at reassuring the boys, though Eddie knew it would be an unsuccessful attempt. Neither he or Mike were worried about getting in trouble, and he could surmise that without so much as glancing at Mike. Will leaned against the doorframe, and that’s when Eddie noticed the glasses tucked in the farmer’s overall pocket.  
  
Will chuckled then, pitying and amused. “You boys better come see it for yourselves, I s’pose. Before it comes to see you.”

 

2.

  
The hardwood floor of his childhood bedroom felt cool against his cheeks, both of which were hot to the touch, and adorned with a rogue red facial flush. The snifter clutched between his nimble fingers was empty, completely polished and clean if not for the lingering smell of dark rum leaving it’s stain. Richie Tozier let the glass drop from his hand, and he watched as it rolled across the hickory boards he had his warm face pressed against. _That’s the last of it._ Richie belched, and the gurgling coming from his gut reminded him of the fleeting fear of drowning in his own vomit. Sitting up was a lost cause, even with the cold wood grounding him, the haze layered over his bloodshot blue eyes kept him in a permanent dizzied state. He kept his remaining focus on stifling the oncoming onslaught of hiccups and praying he wouldn’t feel the tell tale trudge of bile creeping up his throat.

His bedroom window was cracked, and he could see only the lavender sky of a day turning to dusk from his position sprawled across the floor like a drunken Raggedy Andy doll. The summer air whipping into his room was anything but fresh, the pungent stench of a town sat atop a rotting sewer system had Richie pressing his nose against the floorboards. Silently, he willed the window to close on it’s own.

Of course, the window did not shut by itself and his hiccups only became more persistent. He hitched his upper body up onto a knobby pair of elbows and watched the stars dance behind his fluttering lids. That’s how his mother found him, inebriated and pliant, on the verge of hurling up the eggs she had made him for breakfast. The last meal he ate. Like she had done it a million times before (and perhaps she had, if Wentworth was as bad of a drunk in his youth as Richie is now) she hauled Richie onto his bed with both arms wrapped around his thin _(too thin,_ she mused) waist. He smiled up at her, toothy, the way he used to after getting caught doing something he knew he shouldn’t have been as a child.

“Not in my house, Richie.” She chastised, though her voice was soft. “No more of this in my house.”

 _“Suuure thang,_ _Maggie.”_ The lazy twang in his voice was slurred, agreeable but unhearing. One of his hands, connected to a limp wrist, gestured with blind certainty towards his opened window. “Be a dawl and close ‘at for me, will ya?”

The soft thump of the window falling shut was a welcomed relief, and Richie’s chest rose with a grateful sigh as the stink of Derry no longer permeated his every sense. If he hadn’t heard the measured clicking of his mother’s nails against the windowsill, he may have let sleep take him. “He called again.” Benevolent and candid, two traits of Maggie Tozier’s that her only son didn’t inherit. Not the man who wished her well-meaning conversation would end before it began, who wished he had passed out on the hardwood before his mother walked in. “Ignoring him isn’t doing you any good, dear. He knows you’re here, eventually he’s going to realize you’re avoiding him.”  
  
“Mmm... you’ve lost me.” Richie hummed with a coy grin. “Is it a secret admirer? Good golly I really hope it’s a secret admirer.”  
  
An exasperated palm slapped down on to the windowsill particularly hard, and Maggie’s wedding ring clacked on it’s landing. “Do you have to be so facetious, Richard?” He wasn’t sober enough to have this talk, or else he wasn’t drunk enough for it. He turned his head towards her, matted curls slid across his barely touched bedsheets with a sweat sticky resistance. The apprehension on his face was easy to read, when he was too buzzed to conceal it. Maggie collected herself with a valiant sigh. “He’s worried.”  
  
“Not as out of character for Stan the Man as you may think.” Richie wagged a finger in the air, he let his head fall back against the bedsheets. “Always been too damned smart for his own good.”  
  
That wasn’t quite fair. They were all too damned smart for their own good, ask any adult in Derry. It wasn’t intelligence that Stan had too much of, it was maturity. He was too damned adult for his own good. That was what set him apart from the others when they were children, and nothing much changed in Derry. There wasn’t a doubt in Richie Tozier’s inebriated mind that Stanley Uris would see right through the act of hopeless ignorance he had maintained since leaving Los Angeles.  
  
“He wasn’t the only one.” Maggie spoke coolly, and she had always been able to see right though Richie, hadn’t she? His eyelids fell shut.  
  
From outside the window, still blissfully shut, the chirping of crickets signified the setting of the sun. His bedroom, blanketed in a warm orange glow, lulled him away from thoughts of Stanley Uris and the self proclaimed group of Losers he spent his childhood with. Being in town didn’t put him at ease, Derry was never known to have that effect on anyone. But the familiarity was a comfort, a small, very small comfort. He mourned for the one bedroom apartment that resided in the outskirts of Los Angeles, the apartment that no longer belonged to him; though it never really had.  
  
He longed for the purple sunsets that shrouded the city of Angels, for the evenings he spent curled up on his used mattress with Tammy Davis, testing voices in the calm of their shared bedroom until she shut him up with a suggestive kiss.  
  
“What kind of name is that?” She had laughed on one of those peaceful nights, her skin was tawny brown underneath their flickering yellow lamp. Delighted, he smiled back, and wrapped one of his arms around her bare shoulders to pull her tight against his side. “Colonel Buford... my God it’s a _mouthful!”_ _  
_  
“Colonel Buford Kissdrivel.” He enunciated in the opulent, posh voice he had practiced ever since he was a child. He dropped a kiss to the top of her curly head, and looked down at her with expectancy on his face. He reverted back to his normal voice to say, “Is it any good, you think? Or should I scrap it?”  
  
Devoted, that was how she looked at him. How she used to look at him, at least. On that night, there was love alongside that devotion. “It’s you, Rich.” Her mouth was curled, exasperated but fond. “Of course it’s good.”  
  
The easy commitment between the two of them hadn’t lasted very long after that. Richie would, almost entirely, take the blame for that. After all, the money wasn’t coming in and when it was, it was in the form of cheap liquor and occasionally, coke; now sold on every LA street corner. It was late, and he was high when he walked in to see his belongings laying helter-skelter across the stained carpet of his apartment, the suitcase he had ever since he left Derry was opened in the center of the room. “All you do is take, Rich.” Tammy seethed, albeit in the dull and muted way that anger manifests in the earliest hours of morning. “I should have listened, you know, when Susan told me to leave you _months_ ago.”  
  
Susan, from what Richie could recall in his state, had never liked him very much. There was obvious contempt on her face whenever they so much as made eye contact, but that glower became all the more obvious when his career was brought up. Or lack thereof. Richie grimaced, and he kicked the suitcase without fervor. _“Women never like the man dating their best friend.”_ One of the older men at the comedy club he frequented informed him, he gurgled and burped drunkenly through his sentences. _“Law of the jungle.”_ _  
_  
Richie was sure that wasn’t true. Susan would have liked him just fine had he been an aspiring doctor, or a lawyer. When he glanced back up at Tammy, he saw how heavy her exhaustion weighed on her. “Where do you s’pose I go, Tams?”  
  
And there was that look of contempt, void of the devotion and love that she used to have so much of, when she gritted through clenched teeth; “Wherever the hell you came from.”  
  
That, being Tammy’s own creative way of telling Richie to go to hell, had not been intended to be taken quite so literally. Derry, Maine was three years and three thousand miles in the rearview, after all. But if he didn’t have Tammy he didn’t have Los Angeles. He certainly wasn’t ready to go back to working at the family diner nearest to him, even if it had paid the bills in the couple of years before he moved in with Tammy. His choice was made the moment she tore apart their shared apartment and threw his belongings in a pile. With the very clear message to _get the hell out._ _  
_  
Richie had only been in Derry for a few days, but he already felt foolish and far more sober than he intended to be. “No one else called?” He asked, and his voice sounded small, vulnerable. “Just Stan?”  
  
“Just Stan.” Maggie confirmed, and oh he hated it when she sounded pitying.  
  
“I’ll call him.” He lied. “I’ll call him soon.”

 

3.

In the small town of Derry, Maine; there was only a single liquor store. It was located across the street from the town’s barber, who was an alcoholic himself. When Richie Tozier was a child, before he was old enough to have any legitimate interest in alcohol, he spent a lot of time sat on the curb in front of that liquor store. It closed before the sunset, as did every shop on the block. On every Friday evening, Wentworth Tozier would make a stop at the little store right before the sunset, right after he left the Dentist’s office he worked at. Richie was seven when he started sitting outside of the liquor store waiting for his father to pull up in his navy blue station wagon.  
  
Wentworth would only buy a single beer, never any more and never any less. The beer was a congratulations to himself, for making it another week without relapsing back into the alcoholism that nearly destroyed him in his twenties. He would drink the entire bottle, right there on the curb right next to where Richie sat; and nearly everyday, Richie would ask if he was allowed to have a sip. His father’s answer never changed.  
  
“Think Mags would have my head if I came home with her little Richie drunk and puking on my shoes.” He would laugh, heartily, and tilt the beer back against his mouth until the brown stained bottom was angled towards the sky. “That’s not a wrath I’m willing to face, son.”  
  
By the time he was in his teen years, he stopped waiting for his father on that street corner. He was too old to be awe inspired by alcohol, or by his own father for that matter, and there were other ways he could attain alcohol if he wanted it. The wine cellar in the Denbrough house, was one of those ways. The barber shop closed down years ago after the death of the town barber, who died of alcohol poisoning. (As he was fated to.) And more notably, the liquor store stayed open well after the sun set.  
  
He thought, though he wasn’t doing a lot of thinking sat on his ass with a bottle of whiskey on his lap, that it was a bit ironic. The barber was fated to die across the street from the very thing that killed him. Fated to succumb to addiction not a block away from the liquor store, which was now open until ten o’clock. Ironic.  
  
Summer in Derry hadn’t officially begun, but the night air was humid, and there wasn’t a trace of breeze. The moon became obscured by the overcast sky when night fell (much to Richie’s relief) despite the sunny day that preceded it. The watchful eye of the moon wasn’t on him, but with the way the yellow streetlight he was sitting beneath was flickering, he began to wish it was. The streets of Derry were empty, the curfew was no longer in place but it was still an expectation of the town to be home before nightfall.  
  
It wouldn’t surprise Richie if there were a couple of teenagers roaming the city at this late hour, that would make the both of them.  
  
How charming is that? A man of almost twenty two years old behaving like a sixteen year old with his brand new license and a bottle of wine he stole from his parents’ cellar. In a crude mockery of his Dad, he tipped his back towards the cloudy sky when he chugged from the bottle. The burn in his throat was almost, almost pleasant.  
  
“You’re going to kill yourself, Tozier.” He thought aloud as he stared at the murky liquid inside the already half empty whiskey bottle. He smiled, and it was surely a cruel, callous sight. “S’pose I’m fated to.” He took another generous swig.  
  
When his eyes refocused on the street in front of him, he caught sight of a storm drain. Hard to make out under the dim street light above his head, but unmistakable. The sight sobered him, if only barely, as it felt like a bucket of ice had been poured down his chest to replace the warmth of the whiskey in his bloodstream. Looking into the black void beneath the sidewalk was comparable to staring into the entrance to hell, and Richie would know. He began to wish he had called Stan back, or hell, answered the phone.  
  
The streetlight above his head flickered once, twice, and then shattered in an explosion of orange and yellow sparks. The glass from the broken bulb sprayed across the concrete, a shrill scraping sound echoed down the empty road. A dog began barking from somewhere down the block.  
  
He was so goddamned drunk.

Standing up on two feet shouldn’t have been possible as it was, especially since his ankle rolled when he hopped out of his window earlier that night. Richie was limping, sure, but the pain wouldn’t come until the next morning; when the alcohol had burned it’s way through his system and left him without it’s numbing effect. The yearning inside of him to get away from the horrors of Derry, and to find _someone,_ is how he made it to the farm.

Mike Hanlon was home, Mike Hanlon would _always_ be home. It kept him moving.

 

4.

Eddie was never partial to dwelling on the past. He had a hell of a childhood, for one, but his memory was spotty at best. He couldn’t dwell on what he couldn’t remember. That being said, he remembered the last time he spoke to Richie Tozier with full clarity. The summer of 1965 had been a swell summer, all things considered. His high school graduation was a nightmare, no thanks to Sonia Kaspbrak, but the resentment he felt towards her paled in comparison to his excitement over being _done._ Done with Derry, at least. And anything that came after Derry, well it couldn’t be all _that_ bad, could it? He was optimistic, blindly so, for perhaps the first time in his life.

His curbed behavior didn’t go unnoticed by his friends. They teased him, sure, but he never felt as if he was being laughed at. They were happy for him, they were _happy._

Independence Day, that was the day Richie made his great escape. Becoming independent on independence day was unapologetically Richie Tozier, and even as the remaining six wallowed in his absence they laughed at the predictability of it all. He hadn’t informed them, that he was leaving but they never really expected him to.

Bassey Park was bustling on July 3rd, already. The smell of grilled food was thick in the humid summer air, and you could spot the heavy black smoke drifting from the hot dog stands all the way from the Derry Ironworks. Men on ladders were hanging red, white and blue decorations, not without the help of the town policemen and even the fire department. The holidays always made Derry feel lighter, _warm._ Eddie found Richie seated on a molding park bench twirling a rather patriotic yo-yo between his fingers. His gaze was jumping from person to person, eyes alight with curiosity as he scanned the pre-celebration crowd. His eyes brightened when they landed on Eddie, and brightened even further when he realized the asthmatic was coming to take a seat on the old park bench next to him.

“Where in the world did you get that?” Was the first thing Eddie said upon sitting down, amusement on his face as he glanced pointedly at the yo-yo.

Richie grinned, his blue eyes were sneaky behind the large frames that adorned his face. “The officers over there were handing ‘em out for the little ones.” He lifted a shoulder to gesture towards the group of policemen circled around the up and running hot dog stand.

“You stole it?” Eddie deadpanned, his voice devoid of any surprise. _Why, I’ve never met a single person so self destructive in my entire life. And Big Bill Denbrough is my best friend._

“I _tried_ to steal it.” Richie corrected, his easy grin locked in place. He flicked the yo-yo into the air, and caught it in his palm in a practiced motion. “And I was caught. Because, let me tell you something Spaghetti Head, if there’s _one thing_ a Tozier man is bad at—”

“Just the one thing?”

“It’s subtlety.” Richie was beaming now, his Cheshire Cat grin trembling and his eyes warm. He was laughing at himself. Eddie couldn’t quite resist smiling back. “As I said, I was caught. Don’t get me wrong, I was perfectly gracious about being busted in the midst of my thievery.” Eddie sorely doubted that. “But, Officer Nell has always had a soft spot for me. He’s mellowed out, the old-timer. And with that; to the victor go the spoils.”

“Keep calling him old-timer and there won’t be anymore free toys in your future.” Eddie pointed out, not unkindly. He failed to mention that Richie may also see a lot more trips down to the Derry Police Station, what with all the trouble he gets himself into. It wasn’t as much a dramatization as Richie thought when he said Officer Nell had a soft spot for him. “Hey,” Eddie started, his eyes followed the yo-yo as it bounced up and down on it’s string. “Are we still on for tomorrow?”

Startled, Richie dropped the yo-yo so it clattered against the park bench beneath him and blinked at Eddie. The sudden horror that crossed his features took Eddie aback, he shifted uncomfortably under the intense look. _“What?”_

“The Sound of Music? At the Aladdin?” Eddie prodded, he narrowed his eyes searchingly. “Me, you and Ben? Ben offered to pay for our tickets, and it’s a good thing too, because I know you’re broke.” Realization hit Richie, and Eddie felt a familiar twinge of annoyance. One he felt every time Richie needed to be reminded of something he had already been told, explicitly. He sighed. “It’s like you to forget.”

“I didn’t forget.” Richie protested with a weak voice, though it was pointless, he wasn’t the greatest liar. Eddie thought it best not to point that out; he was reminded, that’s all that mattered. He looked uncomfortable, suddenly, squirming where he sat with a pinched up face. “Ben’s… really been looking forward to that.”

“Yes.” He stretched the word out, eyeing Richie suspiciously. “If you’re planning on not coming—”

“It’s outta my hands.” Richie winced, and spread his palms out apologetically. There was something he wasn’t saying, something he was avoiding. As oblivious as Eddie could be _(and boy, could he be oblivious)_ he had an idea about what it was Richie wasn’t saying. _And God,_ not even halfway through the summer. “Tell Ben I’m sorry. For disappointing him, not for missing the Sound of Music. Musicals… always a snooze fest.”

Richie had always been a terrible liar, and he had always loved musicals. Eddie hid a smile by ducking his head down to stare at the overgrown grass that brushed up against the bottom of the park bench. “I’m not telling him that.”

“Ah, I didn’t think you would Eds.” Richie clicked his tongue once before leaning over to ruffle Eddie’s hair, and if he weren’t certain he wouldn’t be seeing Richie for a while— perhaps a long while, he would have batted his hand away and told him off for his insistence upon that stupid nickname. Jeezum crow, nearly a decade of friendship and he can’t remember the last time Richie Tozier called him by his actual _name._ “Mr. Nell is still handing out yo-yos, I’m sure you could pass for a youngin’ but if he sees through you, you can always start crying. Really play it up too. I heard he’s got it real bad for crybabies—”

Eddie shoved him, right off of the bench and into the grass. It didn’t so much as wipe the smile off of Richie’s face. “See you later, Trashmouth.” He grumbled, kicking up some dirt into the bespectacled teen’s face with his already filthy shoes. “Next time you ditch Ben I’ll push you a lot harder than that.”

He cackled, throwing his head back and flopping against the grass bonelessly. The sun was orange on his skin, and his elbows were dirtied with soil. Maybe when Eddie was younger, the shocked delight of Richie’s chortles would have offended him. It didn’t, anymore. He laughed along with Richie. “Yeah, I’ll see you later Eddie.”

Three years later was still... _later,_ Eddie supposed. He had always planned on their next meeting being sooner rather than later, but Richie had always been a man of his word. It was a surprise to see him again, all the same. Oh, but it was Richie Tozier all right, and the years blended cleanly in his mind the longer he stared at the unconscious man with his face in the dirt which surrounded the Hanlon home. If he squinted, he could see that eighteen year old high school graduate lying in the Bassey Park grass with his chin angled towards the sky as he howled through laughter. Only if he squinted. Pitiful as it was, Eddie was happy to see him, empty bottle of liquor curled loosely between pliant fingers included.  
  
He didn’t have to ask if Mike shared his sentiment, Eddie watched as he crouched down and gently pried the whiskey bottle from between Richie’s dirt streaked fingers, a grim sadness on his face as he tossed the pint of Jim Bean over his shoulder where it landed softly in a patch of grass. “Found him first thing this morning.” Will Hanlon said from behind them, voice apologetic. “Thought he was pushin’ up daisies, ‘til I heard him snore.”  
  
He didn’t blame Will, for assuming him dead at first glance. Richie looked like hell, his skin was ashy and pale beneath the grime that coated his sleep slack face. It was pathetic, and he had never known Richie Tozier to roll over and play piteous. With the toe of his shoe, Eddie nudged at his lax shoulder. Richie grunted, sleepily, but didn’t so much as budge otherwise.  
  
“We should get him inside.” Eddie winced at the thickness of his voice, rough with anxiety. He cleared his throat. “He could get... get sick out here.” _If he’s not already._ _  
_  
The sun, which had been steadily rising ever since they walked outside, was high enough in the sky to touch Richie’s sleeping body. Sweat plastered his hair against the back of his neck, and the curls spread across the ground began to frizz in the summer humidity. Eager to get him out of the dirt and into the shower _(preferably),_ he and Mike wasted no time grabbing him underneath his armpits and hoisting him onto a pair of wobbling legs.  
  
“‘m I on a farm?” He slurred, alcoholic spittle flew from his lips and his head lolled forward drunkenly. That would have likely disgusted Eddie, had he not been so relieved that Richie wasn’t in some sort of coma. They started to drag Richie towards the house, his feet stumbled along between them with all of the grace of a newborn fawn. He tilted his head towards Mike, and unseeingly patted at his chest. “You’re not Butch Bowers, are you?”  
  
“Butch Bowers is dead.” Mike assured, his voice full of warm amusement.  
  
“Oh what a relief.” Richie giggled, and he leaned his head further into Mike’s shoulder. “Guess God is a merciful God.”  
  
His body went limp again as he passed out for the second time. Mike, who was saddling significantly more weight than Eddie, faltered at the sudden shift and stumbled backwards before steadying himself with a boot. They got him into the guest bedroom easy enough after that. With the help of Will Hanlon, whose calm assistance and quiet presence soothed Eddie’s anxiety.

With the way his stomach was churning, breakfast was very abruptly out of the question. If all of the bloody talk of what goes on behind the farm curtains wasn’t enough to take away his appetite, the sight of Richie Tozier pissed drunk and mumbling brokenly in his sleep was. Will Hanlon, kind the way that he was, left them with no more than a reminder that breakfast was waiting on them— if they wanted it. There was no expectation in his voice that the two of them would take up his offer to join him at the kitchen table. Eddie imagined that when Richie woke up, he would likely be too nauseous and hungover to consider eating. _He’s eating whether he likes it or not,_ Eddie thought darkly as he observed the sleeping form that dirtied his previously clean sheets, _since he can’t care take of his fucking self._

  
“How long has he been in town?” Eddie pried his eyes away from his pillow, which Richie’s grimy fingers had in a death grip, to stare fixedly at the side of Mike’s face.  
  
The side of Mike’s mouth twitched, _irritably,_ Eddie realized, before it settled back into the saddened frown that occupied his face ever since he laid eyes on Richie. “Didn’t know he was in town.” His responding shrug was easy enough, but there was an edge hidden beneath his words. Not much got past Mike, certainly not when it came to their ragtag little group or their respective presences in Derry. He must have looked as surprised as he felt, because Mike glanced away from Richie briefly to smile at him wryly. Though that made the defensiveness lurking in his eyes all the more prominent. “He hasn’t been here long, I can tell you that.”  
  
“I’ll say.” Eddie scoffed.  
  
Three years is a long time to not pick up a phone, he didn’t quite add. A long time to leave the best friends you ever had scrounging for scraps that weren’t there. He’s sure Mike would see it differently, being the only one of them who didn’t up and leave Derry. But they _all_ visited, all except Richie. They kept purposeful contact with one another, as sparse as it was. Something Richie didn’t have much practice with, incredibly.  
  
“You’re mad at him.” Mike pointed out, finally pulling his eyes away from said _him_ to give his undivided attention to Eddie.  
  
“Usually am.” Eddie waved away the question with the lazy flick of his hand, he smiled unconvincingly and without teeth. “You would be too if a drunk man was dirtying up your bedsheets.”  
  
Patiently, Mike returned the smile. “We could have taken him to my room.”  
  
But no, that wouldn’t do. Belatedly, he hoped Mike hadn’t seen the brief flash of lingering guilt that darkened his face. Wishful thinking on his part. That insistent obligation to help Mike Hanlon in any way he could, because this after all, was the man who gave him the bed Richie was soiling with his toxic spittle and his grass stained jeans still clouded his reasonable judgment. And of course, _Mike wouldn’t see it that way._ He avoided Mike’s eyes and gave a cursory shrug. “Can’t let Richie have the thrill of waking up in Mike Hanlon’s bed.”  
  
Mike snorted, disbelieving. “And you don’t think waking up in Eddie Spaghetti’s bed would be a delight?”  
  
Groaning, Eddie shoved at his shoulder and scowled at the raucous laughter that consumed the drab room. “Don’t you start with that, Mike. I’m serious— I don’t think I can take hearing it from the both of you.” He knew he was whining, but ah it didn’t matter, Mike was the only person there to hear him anyways. Toning it down, he added a little cooly, “If I wasn’t accustomed to Richie Tozier-isms, trust me, he _would_ be waking up in your bed.”  
  
There was also the matter of his desperation to be the person to ream Richie out about his health practices, or lack of health practices. He resented how much of his mother he had in him. Pretending he didn’t see the incredulous look Mike fixed on him, Eddie dodged the subject. “Do his parents know he’s here?” He already knew the answer to that, admittedly. He remembered enough about Went and Maggie to be certain that neither of them would have let Richie wander around Derry like a drunken fool in the earliest hours of morning. He sorely hoped there wasn’t a search party quite yet.  
  
“I’ll call them.” Mike grimaced, and Eddie sympathized with him, despite his hesitance to jump up and volunteer himself for a phone call with Richie’s (sure to be furious) pair of parents anytime in the near future. “Was already planning on calling Stan and Ben, figured they would want to know about... _him.”_ _  
_  
Stan and Ben were already in town for the summer, of that Eddie was already aware, though he hadn’t seen either of them since he had arrived. There wasn’t a rush to meet, as he had seen Ben when he visited New York in the spring and spent plenty of time with Stan when they both stayed in Derry the summer prior. He spent the summer holing up in the town’s cheapest bed and breakfast, which had effectively sucked him dry of any penny on his person. They saw each other regularly, and with Bill and Beverly coming in from Tulsa and Chicago respectively within the next couple of weeks, there was an unspoken plan to meet as a group.  
  
With a start, Eddie realized that this would be the first summer since the year they graduated that all seven of them would be in Derry at the exact same time. Seemed appropriate too, what with it being ten years since the summer that their little group became complete. That’s if Richie was planning on staying, however.  
  
“Don’t take too long.” Eddie teased, trying for smooth, but neither of them could have missed the nervous edge lacing his words.  
  
Mike simply nodded, and rested a gentle parting hand on Eddie’s smaller shoulder before he disappeared behind the door that led into the hallway just outside of the guest bedroom. Eddie just barely resisted the urge to let his head drop against it as he caught sight of the mud caked soles on Richie’s tennis shoes. Both of which rested carelessly atop the handmade quilt Jessica Hanlon brought him on his first night in their home. He wished, not for the first time and not without guilt, that his mother were more like Jessica.  
  
He was fixated on the playing cards still spread haphazardly on the ground when Richie Tozier spoke semi-coherently for the first time since thanking God that Butch Bowers was dead. “Either I’m dreaming, or I’m very bad with directions when drunk.”  
  
Eddie startled when he heard the raspy voice, and looked up to see Richie with his eyes wide open, very much alert. He appeared far more sober than he had not fifteen minutes prior. His blue irises were shocking to look at next to the bloodshot that colored the whites of his eyes, but they weren’t glassy with inebriation. The hand that cupped his eyes to block the sun pouring in through opened blinds was enough confirmation that yes, Richie Tozier was feeling the effects of a _morning after._ “You’re bad with directions when you’re sober.” Eddie responded, almost habitually.  
  
Richie laughed, granted he flinched immediately afterwards as the act itself pained him. “Figured as much. If I were dreaming you would look a _lot_ happier to see me.”  
  
That wasn’t quite fair. He was happy to see Richie, despite the fact that most of that happiness was overpowered by irritation, worry and frustration. It was selfish, maybe, to have expected to see Richie more after graduation. But he wasn’t alone in making that assumption, he didn’t think so, at least. Stan and Beverly shared the same sentiment with him, he was damn sure of that. The anger, which he hadn’t truthfully tried very hard to conceal, came spilling over rapidly. “Do you even realize how fucking worried you had us?” And he truly couldn’t have held it in any longer if he tried, he wasn’t ever the type to maintain a poker face. “You look like you tried to fight death. And _lost,_ Richie.”  
  
His jaw ticked minutely, and he propped himself up onto an elbow. “That bad, huh?” Richie clicked his tongue, and Eddie’s nostrils flared at the sound. “Never any nonsense with you. Keep it clean and cut straight to the chase, ain’t that right, Eds?”  
  
“Asshole.” Eddie gritted out on instinct, there wasn’t any heat to his words. There never really had been, he had always been a pushover when Richie Tozier was involved. A smile flickered across Richie’s lips, before he schooled it back into bogus sternness. “Are you going to tell me where you’ve been?”  
  
“Los Angeles.” He answered easily, prepared for the question and loose with the answer. Really, Eddie had already known that. That’s when he stood up on knobby knees that threatened to give underneath him, his lips tight as he swayed under the remaining effects of whiskey. He looked older, not much, but the gangly teenager he had once been was replaced with something... something more. Eddie couldn’t decipher how he felt about that. Richie frowned and squinted suddenly, he swept his eyes around the shoebox of a bedroom as if he was seeing it for the first time. “This isn’t your bedroom?”  
  
Incredulously, Eddie blinked up (resentfully, still _up)_ at him. “You just now noticed that?”  
  
“Forgive me for paying you more attention than the room we were in.” He said absentmindedly, though he was still frowning deeply. Warmth darkened Eddie’s cheeks. “And I lost my glasses.”  
  
The pair of sloppily repaired glasses resting in the pocket of Will Hanlon’s overalls came to mind, but Eddie had no desire to share that information with Richie quite yet. Let him suffer without his eyesight. “We’re in Mike Hanlon’s house.” He coughed uncomfortably as Richie’s questioning eyes shot over to him. “I’m staying here. Just for the summer.” He added the last part quickly.  
  
“Well I’ll be damned.” Richie laughed, he looked around the small room appreciatively. He mumbled something under his breath, something along the lines of _‘being better at directions than he’s given any credit for,’_ before his eyes came to a final stop on Eddie. “And Mrs. K hasn’t tried dragging you back to _Casa Del Espaguetis_ by your ears yet?”  
  
Uneasily, Eddie involuntarily felt himself leaning away from Richie, who stepped closer with every word he spoke. It wasn’t that the proximity in general distressed him, the last thing he needed was Richie’s unwashed fingers giving him a noogie, or pinching at his cheeks. Regardless, Richie noticed his unease, and his smile became strained. “Can’t do a lot of dragging me around Derry from Pennsylvania.” Eddie explained.  
  
There’s no way Richie could have known Sonia moved after Eddie left for New York, he knew that, but it only made explaining it that much more draining. _You would have known, you_ could _have._

  
Mercifully, Mike reappeared before Eddie inevitably embarrassed himself when he let his betrayal at the three year gap of time that Richie spent apart from the Losers’ Club slip. He didn’t look nonplussed to see Richie up and about, which likely meant that he heard Richie’s less than quiet voice through the thin walls. He grinned broadly, welcomingly, at the hungover man looming over Eddie _(the traitor)_ and stepped forward to pull Richie into a one armed hug. “Good to see you, Trashmouth.” He hummed, one of Mike’s hands worked to soothe the hesitance in Richie’s posture with a slow rubbing between his tensed shoulder blades. “Would like to have seen a little less of you, if I’m being honest.”  
  
Richie cackled, and the stiffness seeped from his shoulders. “You know how to win a man’s heart Mikey, I tell ya.” He wrapped his other arm around Mike to pull him further into the hug, and then he turned his head just so, his eyes met Eddie’s over Mike’s broad shoulder. “It’s good to see you too.”  
  
Unexplainably flustered, Eddie broke eye contact.  
  
“You say that now.” Mike teased, he pulled away with one last friendly pat on Richie’s shoulder. Meaningfully, he stared at the man he found on his front lawn. “I had to make a few calls.” From the corner of his eye, Eddie could see his full body wince. “Your mom apologized seventeen times in three minutes, I counted. Ben Hanscom recommended stopping by the pharmacy to pick up some aspirin, and Stan Uris—“  
  
“Sends his regards?” Richie interrupted, his voice full of fake chipper as he babbled through his discomfort. “What a _doll_ that Stan is, always looking out for his good pal Richie like any good religious boy should—“  
  
“Is on his way over.” Mike finished, and there was a devious glint in his deep brown eyes. He was exasperated too, he just voiced it differently than Eddie, or really, any of the others did.  
  
“‘Course he is.” Richie huffed. For the first time since the two of them found him in the grass just outside, he looked thoroughly agitated. Any last traces of intoxication slipped away along with the calm on his face. He suppressed that look rather quickly, a wan smile replaced the sour puckering that had curled his mouth. “Guess that’s my cue to hop into the shower, huh? You got any hot water, Mikey? A change of clothes?”  
  
Mike smiled then, but he couldn’t quite hide that lingering sadness with this look. “Not for _you,_ Richie Tozier.”

 

5.

A white 1959 Ford Thunderbird. That was the car Eddie was lucky enough to get his hands on the moment his first ever paycheck made itself a home in his wallet. The car was used, and he bought it cheap— _cheaper_ than cheap. And still he had to fork over the entire check he earned from the job he landed at an auto body shop in Queens _and_ the small allowance he had been saving since he was fourteen years old. Money saved for the express purpose of moving out of Derry to buy his own car. Even when he was skipping meals and stealing pencils and paper he could no longer afford off of his classmates, Eddie couldn’t say he regretted it.  
  
The car became his pride and joy. Even if it took several months (and several more paychecks) to fully repair it.  
  
Living in New York City, a car wasn’t a necessity. Traveling by subway was easy— he never once had any trouble finding his way through those dark tunnels, and commuting by subway was cheaper than keeping and maintaining a car. But see, Eddie adored cars. Adored them like driving around in a smooth piece of machinery was his favorite hobby. As far as hobbies go, Eddie had three; chatting about venereal diseases, keeping up with the New York Yankees and figuring out how to take a car apart and put it back together _better_ than before.  
  
His car was his first real companion in New York, and he was rueful in admitting how much he preferred it’s company over the company of other people. That’s why, perhaps, it came as a surprise when he saw Richie Tozier seated on the hood of his car wearing a pair of borrowed khakis— and Eddie was happier to see him than his Thunderbird.  
  
He hadn’t been outside for very long, but already his damp brown curls were frizzing in the midday humidity. Clutched loosely between his fingers was the empty liquor bottle they found on his person that morning, now dirt stained from it’s time buried in the grass. He rolled it around on his palm, his blue eyes stormy from behind coke bottle glasses as he stared accusingly at the label. The frustration on his face was illuminated orange by the sun reflecting against the dark glass.  
  
“Whatever you’re looking for isn’t going to be in that bottle.” Richie startled at the sound of Eddie’s voice, his chilling look of annoyance making way for shock. He recovered quickly, and the warm smile he gave Eddie seemed all the more lovely under the sun.  
  
“You sure about that?” He asked, and his palm rubbed against the side of the bottle in sure circular motions. “Genies have been known to pop out of these things, y’know. I’ve had my three wishes planned ever since I was old enough to hold a beer.”  
  
Eddie chose not to comment on how Richie had held beers long before he was, legally, old enough to do so.  
  
“Wrong type of bottle.” Eddie, more amused than he would care to admit, hopped on the hood next to Richie. His legs dangled over the side, he would rather they sway in the breeze than willingly put his dirty tennis shoes on the white paint job. Delicately, he plucked the bottle from Richie’s fingers and tossed it back into the grass— despite Richie’s responding huff at having the bottle snagged from his hands, he looked almost relieved to no longer be holding it. “And if one of those three wishes is a refill, it doesn’t count.”  
  
Grinning, Richie leaned back against the car’s windshield with a happy hum. “Why? You offering to buy me a drink, Eds?”  
  
“Not if you keep calling me that nickname I won’t.”  He groused, he angled his face towards the farmhouse so Richie wouldn’t see the stubborn flush that brought color to his cheeks. It was, at least, a comfort that their back and forth hadn’t changed very much in three years. “Besides, next time we go out, drinks are on _you._ Consider it your apology to me for drooling on my favorite shirt.” _And for worrying me, for always worrying me._ _  
_  
Silence lingered between them, not uncomfortable on Eddie’s end but unusual nonetheless. _Peace_ didn’t come naturally to Richie Tozier, it never had. He could have fallen asleep— but that didn’t seem anymore likely than his being wide awake and allowing quietude to stew. Hesitantly, he casted a glance over his shoulder, and his chest jumped in surprise when he saw Richie’s blue eyes— wide in contemplation, a strange look to obscure his features. He cleared his throat awkwardly, and let his own gaze drift towards the sky above him. “Sure thing, Spaghetti Head. You don’t think Stan’ll mind me borrowing a few dollars from him, to buy you that drink?”  
  
Eddie observed Richie with a wary gaze, there was something wrong. Something strained about the way he was talking, the way he was joking and teasing like it was an obligation and not something he did with ease. His jaw ticked as he clenched it. “What is it?” Richie didn’t react at all to the question. “Jesus, is it about the bottle? I can go get it if it’s that—”  
  
Richie fixed a startled, offended look on him and his vocal cords abruptly stopped working. “The _bottle?_ Eds, it’s empty.” The corner of his mouth twitched, amusement replaced his disbelief. Softly, he added, “Aside from the stubborn as a mule genie, of course.”  
  
He heard the crunch of gravel beneath tires before he spotted Stanley Uris’ car. _And what a car it was_. A silver Plymouth Road Runner, with a paint job that sparkled in the noon sun. A visibly well kept vehicle, though Eddie expected no less from Stan. The engine was silent as it parked next to Eddie’s car, so silent that Eddie didn’t miss the frustrated exhale from next to him that Richie certainly hadn’t meant for him to hear. The car door opened, slow and patient, like Stan was in no rush at all to come face to face with his best friend after not having seen him for three years.  
  
He always, even when they were children, dressed like he was needed somewhere important. Typically— that important place was the Barrens, the Park, the Aladdin even, on a day where they had money.  
  
His attire hadn’t changed, Eddie hadn’t really expected it to since the last time he saw Stan. The sleeves on his button up were rolled precisely, the navy slacks he wore fit like a charm. His black hair was slicked down with product, styled neatly and professionally. And he _would_ have appeared the epitome of professionalism, had it not been for the scowl that soured his face.  
  
“Eddie.” His voice was crisp, too careful to reveal much emotion. He kept his cool gaze on Richie, who was doing a poor job of attempting to sink into the car he was laying on. “I was hoping to see you again, under better circumstances.” He finally looked at Eddie, and his dark brown eyes were much warmer when they met his. Warm in the measured way that Stan always was. Eddie couldn’t have been happier to see him. “How long has it been?”  
  
Before Eddie could answer, or even open his mouth, Stan wrinkled his nose and waved away the question with a dismissive hand cutting through the air. “Too long.”  
  
“Too long.” Eddie agreed, smiling faintly.  
  
“Get in the car, I’m taking you home.” His blunt manner of jumping from sentence to sentence took Eddie a while to get used to, when they initially became friends. That was over a decade ago. Stan focused his calculating eyes on the Hanlon farmhouse, and there was the briefest flash of longing in his gaze before he blinked it away.  
  
“That’s _awful_ fahward of you, Stanley Uris.” Richie crooned like a Southern Belle, and Stan’s icy glare slowly drifted from the farmhouse to focus coldly on the man lounging atop Eddie’s Thunderbird. “Ah’m not the kinda girl who goes home with just any fella awn our first date. Ah’m a real lady, mister.”  
  
“Hmm... so you can still talk?” Stan asked, though the question was rhetorical and his voice was austere. He examined his fingernails as he spoke. “Shame that you couldn’t use that thing you call a mouth to answer the goddamned phone.”  
  
Richie winced, but it was as forced as it was fake. _“Ouch.”_ _  
_  
He was grinning, lopsidedly, and he wasn’t putting up a fight. Not really. He hopped off of the hood of Eddie’s car, and let his palm slap against it with a resounding clang. “See ya later, ol’ girl. It’s been a real pleasure sittin’ on your lap. Hope to do it again sometime.” His smile was softer, when he pried his eyes from the Thunderbird to Eddie. “I’m here all summer.”  
  
“Isn’t that a relief?” Stan grumbled sarcastically. “A whole summer of keeping Richie Tozier out of trouble.”  
  
But it was something like relief that grabbed Eddie when Richie said he was staying for longer than a few days. The excitement was obvious on his face, he knew it was. He didn’t think Richie noticed, as he started questioning Stan on how fast his car could go on a dirt road. But Stan noticed, and when Richie wasn’t paying attention, he didn’t look like he minded keeping the bespectacled man out of trouble for a few months. Regretfully, Eddie felt the exact same way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i apologize that it took so long for me to post this (over a month?) but these chapters are getting longer and i’ve been dreadfully busy. i appreciate the comments on the last chapter, almost all of them referred to my writing as “stephen king-esque” and that’s quite possibly, the best comment i could get.


	3. abbott and costello meet the mummy

_“I coulda been a contender._ _I coulda been somebody.”_

_(On the Waterfront)_

 

1.

By the most conservative of any interpretations, Stanley Uris was a reasonable man. He was rational, logical, level headed— he maintained a shrewd front, and he prided himself for it. That being said, he felt his unflappable exterior slipping away with every second spent on the dirt road (and _my God,_ weren’t they ever going to pave this thing?) that lead from the farms surrounding Derry, and into the heart of the town. With Richie Tozier sat in the passenger seat of his car.  
  
He wasn’t accustomed to feeling so conflicted, especially when it came to the likes of his friends. The one thing in his life that he, consistently, didn’t have to ponder was how he felt about his friends. _Unquestionably devoted._ And Richie Tozier was the best friend he ever had, though he would never say it aloud.  
  
But it took all of one look at Richie to know that the last three years hadn’t been very kind to him. Not that that came as much of a surprise to Stan. He figured as much when the man refused to answer his calls, and Stan had to practically beg Maggie Tozier to put her son on the line. He never liked begging. Hence, his confliction. Was he relieved to see Richie again? Indubitably. Was he sick with worry over the state he found his best friend in? Grievously. Was he furious that his closest confidant had spent the last week avoiding him like the plague? Beyond reason.  
  
The car bumped along the road at a leisurely pace, Stan wasn’t in a hurry, he never was. The silence was strange though, and when he spared a glance at the man to his right he felt his stomach clench at the dark purple bags that deepened the hollows beneath his eyes— his eyelids sank every few seconds before fluttering open again to stare blankly at the road stretched out before him. He was exhausted.  
  
Stan cleared his throat lowly, and with intent to start a conversation with Richie without startling him too much in the process. “Do you want to explain why you haven’t answered any of my calls?” He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. “Or would you rather start with why you disappeared for three years?”  
  
Not that Stan blamed him, for breaking contact. He understood, perhaps better than anyone, why cutting contact with any and everything related to Derry sounded appealing. Even if that meant leaving behind your entire life, and the people in it. Richie’s eyes were wide open now, the grassy fields on either side of the dirt road reflected in the blues of his eyes.  
  
“I wouldn’t call it disappearing.” Richie shrugged, and his drowsy voice still had a teasing lilt. His head rolled against the headrest as he turned to stare at the side of Stan’s face. _“You_ knew where I was.”  
  
And he did. It came in the form of a small slip of paper with nothing but the city Richie was headed to and the date he was leaving scrawled in his distinct chicken scratch. Stan had only found it the day after Richie had left, wedged between the pages of a Fantastic Four comic book that he had let the Los Angeles bound teenager borrow earlier that month. He wouldn’t admit it aloud— but he _had_ been relieved to see it. Even if that relief very swiftly transformed into frustration, for that unassuming scrap being the last form of contact he got from his best friend.  
  
The note wasn’t a declaration of friendship, just a final disclosure to someone who would understand. Someone who would remain shrewd when informing their shared group of friends that Richie left on his own volition. That he hadn’t been dragged out of Derry or, worse yet, dragged into a sewer. It wasn’t meant to make him feel special.  
  
Even still, he never mentioned Los Angeles by name to the Losers’ Club. He let that be their secret to have, at least until Richie came back.  
  
“Oh come on.” Richie cajoled, and his eyelashes fluttered when Stan caught his eye. “You’re not mad about me leaving. We all left.” _Damn him._ “How’s Atlanta?”  
  
“Warm.” Was his brisk reply, he flicked his turn signal with a tad more vigor than usual. “Obviously I’m not mad at you for leaving. Stop looking so damned smug about it, we both knew that wasn’t why I was mad,”  
  
_“Am_ mad.” He corrected himself. “I’m the odd man out in that regard. The others are expecting an explanation, I know you know that.”  
  
“Then I’ll spin a helluva story.” Richie’s smile was tight.

He wanted to coerce an answer from Richie. He wanted to poke and prod at this obvious sore spot until he inevitably snapped and yelled until his voice was thick and raw about why he just refused to pick up the damned phone. Stan wasn’t going to do that. For one, he already knew the answer to that question. Richie Tozier had one hell of a poker face, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have any tells. Blackout drunkenness in which he spent his time ignoring Stanley Uris, _that_ in and of itself was a tell.

He was having a particularly rough time, and he didn’t want Stan to know. All it would have taken was a phone call for Stan to find out, just like all it took was the sight of Richie’s haggard body spread across the hood of Eddie Kaspbrak’s little car for him to know.

On a more selfish note, it _had_ been three years. And Richie Tozier was his best friend, goddammit. His concerns could be saved for later, when the mention of a bottle of whiskey didn’t make Richie tense like a tuned guitar string.

“How are your parents?” Stan asked, and he felt the wry look Richie was giving him burning into the side of his face. Small talk had never been their thing. He scowled, and glanced over at Richie to make sure the slumped man got the full brunt of his anger. “I’m sorry— would you prefer we go back to talking about California?”

“Maggie’s great. Went’s grumpy. The usual.” Richie shrugged, but he was looking out the window as he said it. His fingers absentmindedly tapped a rhythm into the middle console. “Think Mags almost fainted when I knocked on her door at three in the afternoon.” He had a smile in his voice. “Didn’t expect me back so soon.”

 _She expected you back sooner._ Stan doesn’t say. Brutal, personal honesty was never their thing either. Not unless it was told with a cheeky grin (on Richie’s part) or a cynical wink (on Stan’s.) “You think she was hoping you’d stay gone longer?” He joked, and it _was_ a joke. He knew Maggie, knew her _well._ If Richie left tomorrow, she would just be thrilled she got today with him.

Richie’s smile went tight again anyways, and the worry hit Stan in his chest like ice. _There’s something very wrong with him._

“And what makes you think she wanted me back at all?” His smile became looser with every word, _believable._ Stan would have believed it, maybe, had he not known Richie better than he knew the back of his own hand. “Derry’s holding up just fine without me, looks like.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

It was the wrong thing to say, because it wasn’t something _Stan_ would say. Not unless he thought Richie needed to hear it— and he saw his mistake in the bitter twist to Richie’s mouth, in the way the rhythmic bouncing of his leg stilled. “Don’t do that.” He looked pained, if briefly, before that false bravado took its place. “When summer ends, you can ask me what the fuck crawled up my ass and died but before then can’t you just…”

Richie huffed through his nose. “Pretend.”

“You know better than I do that I’m no good at playing pretend.” Richie laughed at that, and it was so genuine that Stan could have sighed his relief.

“Aw— don’t give me that shit.” He was grinning, and his blue eyes were bright with their mirth. “You’re the best poker player I know, and I’ve been to Vegas.”

“The best poker player Richie Tozier knows, I’ll be sure to add that to my resumé.” Stan deadpanned, flattered as he pretended he wasn’t. Oh hell, cynicism didn’t count as playing pretend, did it?

“Will that be going before or after _‘Veteran Boy Scout?’”_

“If you think I’ve forgotten that _you_ were also a boy scout, you’re sorely mistaken.” They joined together, and Stan was surprised that memory from ten years ago was still intact. These days, not much of his memory was. It was Richie’s idea, as a matter of fact, and still it was no surprise when he was _‘dishonorably discharged’_ (as Wentworth Tozier had put it) only a few weeks after joining.

“I joined for selfish reasons.” Richie flicked his hand through the air. “S’mores ‘n things of that nature.”

It wasn’t entirely dishonest, but it was evading the truth. Before the lucky seven became the lucky seven, Richie (with the only child syndrome that he pretended he didn’t have) yearned for friends. A group of people to call home, and he thought he might find that in the boy scouts. Stan, personally, could have avoided team bonding exercises entirely and not missed a thing. He joined for the _order_ that came with being a scout, and that’s what kept him there until he was old enough for real responsibility.

“Can’t put a thing like _that_ on a resumé but you bet your fern I’m putting my badge in my will. I’m sure Maggie still has the old thing— she’s sentimental like that. _For Stanley Uris, my badge of dishonor, a reminder that cool heads drop out of the Boy Scouts of America._ ” Richie winked then, and it hit Stanley how badly he had missed him. “I’ve always had a flare for the dramatic.”

“I know.” A smile blossomed on Stan’s face, and Richie looked almost surprised to see it. “It’s what got you _kicked out_ of the Scouts.”

“Damn you. I was sure you had forgotten that.” He snaps his fingers right as they turn onto the street the Tozier house is on. Outwardly, he looks no less than nonchalant. “Eager to get rid of me?”

The car shut off with a soft hum in front of the driveway, and Stan hoped that he wouldn’t have to move his car from blocking Wentworth Tozier’s station wagon. He turned towards Richie when the car settled, and was unsurprised to see the twenty one year old poorly hiding his wince behind his stringy brown hair— it was longer than he kept it as a kid, but the curls didn’t go any further than the tip of his nose when he hung his head. He collected himself rather quickly, and lifted his head with a smile. The door swung open soundlessly, it rocked back once on it’s hinges as Richie stepped onto the sidewalk.

“Answer your phone.” Stan reminded.

“You kids and your telephones.” His Granny Grunt voice was lazy, but no less grating than it was when they were children.

Richie Tozier staggered inside, favoring his right ankle. It wasn’t reasonable, but Stanley Uris’ car stayed parked in the driveway long after he lost sight of Richie Tozier from behind his front door. _Unflappable._ Stanley scoffed internally, his car started to life silently. _The Unflappable Stanley Uris. What a joke._

 

2.

It only took two steps. One, to enter the threshold of his home and two, to come to a stop before the ashen face of his worried mother before he was brushing past her with a focused determination to make it to the downstairs bathroom. He was hurling, and it was always so foul after a long night of guzzling hard liquor. His dry heaving echoed against the sides of the toilet bowl, _and if his mother hadn’t known what was wrong before he was sure she could hear it for herself now._

His brain pounded against his skull with all of the familiarity of a mid-morning hangover. He moaned sickly, and crumpled against the side of the toilet. The ankle he rolled hours ago throbbed miserably from crouching atop bathroom tiles. _Home sweet home._

“Richie?” Maggie called from outside of the door, panicked— she sounded as if she had been calling his name for the better portion of the last few minutes. The knob rattled, _and had he locked the door?_ When had he managed _that_ in his mad scramble to the toilet? “Richie, open the door. Richie… _Richie!”_

Her voice was shrill and the knob was shaking and clattering against the frame and the smell of regurgitated whiskey was making his stomach _roll—_ _“I’m fine!”_ He snapped, hoarsely. One of his hands fumbled blindly for the handle that would flush away the sour smell of vomit. He slumped with relief when his hand caught the trip lever. “Sh’alright tootsh. Jusht a shtomach bug. No need to break down the damn door.”

There was silence from the other end of the door, for which Richie was shamefully thankful for. He pressed his spinning head against the seat, warm from where his hands had grasped it, and hoped to will away the onslaught of nausea.

“There’s aspirin in the cupboard.” He couldn’t hear her, over the sound of blood roaring in his ears. Couldn’t hear the resignation in her words. The silence returned and Richie was _grateful,_ he wished he wasn’t.

The heaving began again.

 

3. 

Whenever Richie would find himself with his head in the toilet and his stomach in the gutter, he would think of the silver monstrosity that Bill Denbrough used in place of a bicycle. Before Los Angeles, before high school even, all it took was a ride on _Silver_ or a split lip from Bowers (a name he only seemed to recall when he was surrounded by a porcelain bowl) for Richie Tozier to do the technicolor yawn. Of course, that saying wasn’t around in Derry when Richie was a child. That one, he picked up himself in Los Angeles after he snorted coke out of the belly button of a male stripper.  
  
_(Mister, are you okay?)_ He was only nineteen at the time, but he didn’t suppose the man he was getting high on was much older. _(You’re not gonna do the technicolor yawn, are you?)_ _  
_  
No, Derry wasn’t nearly that creative. That’s not to say he didn’t hear his fair share of expressions every time he unloaded his guts onto the nearest available surface. _(Lost your lunch again, Four-eyes?) (Hey Belch, I think he’s blowing chunks... got a weak stomach don’tcha, candy ass?)—_ _  
_  
_“You gonna toss your cookies, Trashmouth?”_ Beverly Marsh used to say when they would share one of the cans of Rheingold that Elfrida Marsh hid underneath her bed in an old shoebox. The two of them were a real matched pair, Richie and Bev. Her parents were never home, not with the late shifts they worked (and he thinks now, that maybe it was a miracle that they did. Or else that death he was promised would have come a lot sooner with the way ol’ Alvin never lurked too far from his daughter) but they would sit on the floor of Beverly’s closet like they were really risking getting caught, and they would pass that can of beer back and forth.  
  
He was young, too young to have developed a tolerance. He would make it through one sip, two sips— and those measly gulps would come back up in the form of a _(tossed cookie)_ technicolor yawn.  
  
Most of his time spent at the Marsh residence was with his head in their toilet.  
  
Beverly Marsh would sit on the toilet tank, one of her hands pushed Richie’s hair back from his forehead and the other held a half finished cigarette between freckled fingers. “You remember I have neighbors, don’t you Richie?” She would remind him every time without fail. Her hazel eyes danced with amusement, or else they danced with that shiny glazed look that came with sipping alcohol. Dark red curls fell from the rubber band she kept them bound with, into her flushed face.  
  
_‘I oughta buy her some bobby-pins.’_ Richie would think, as he stared up at her with teary eyes. _‘I’d only have to mow one lawn to do it too.’_ But he would start hurling again, and the thought would slip his mind until the next time.  
  
His stomach was weak, and it had been for so long that Richie had assumed his stomach had invariably been weak. (Though, if he had ever thought to ask his mother, she may have told him that his stomach had become especially feeble sometime between ‘57-‘58.) He hated when he puked in front of other people, Beverly Marsh and Bill Denbrough were perhaps the only two exceptions.  
  
Bill never did anything more than stare down at him plaintively as he gagged on the concrete, or the grass, or wherever it was that he made the redhead stop his bike _(N-Nuh-Next time we’re w-walking, Tr-Truh-Trashbreath.)_ and Beverly would lean down with a soft, hesitant smile and ask—  
  
“You done?” Like clockwork, she waited until his breath finished hitching to ask. Her hand would extend into his vision to offer out the rest of her cigarette like it was an aspirin pill, and he would take a drag every single time. She hardly ever spoke, just sat on the tank like she hadn’t a care in the world and waited until he regained his bearings. Sometimes though, sometimes she talked. “Eddie says these things’ll give us cancer.”  
  
“Eddie also thinks rubbing your eyes after scratching your balls’ll give you cancer.” She didn’t comment on how his vocal cords sounded as if he’d run them through a paper shredder, but she did wrinkle her nose at his comment. “If anything is giving anyone cancer, it’s that lung sucker he keeps in his pocket.”  
  
“Don’t you go telling him that.” Beverly muttered, darkly. “Don’t you go saying that to him Richie Tozier.”  
  
Incredulous, he whipped his head up to look at her— even though it made stars dance in front of his dizzied eyes. ”I wasn’t going to _tell him_ anything. He’d spend the rest of the summer in a hospital bed with Mrs. Kaspbrak standing guard outside his room.”  
  
“You’d miss him.” Beverly teased with a shit eating grin that displayed rows of pearly teeth.  
  
“Miss him like a limb, can’t very well pinch Big Bill’s cheeks now can I?” He laid down, his skull clunked against the tiles as he spread himself out onto Beverly Marsh’s bathroom floor. He stared at the ceiling, yellowing and discolored from water damage, with a sudden burst of solemnity. “Might toughen him up though, having the rug swept out from under him.” His head rolled against the tiles as he turned to look up at Beverly. “I think he could use some hair on his chest.”  
  
Cigarette smoke exhaled from her nose. “I think you’re sweet on him.”  
  
“I think you’re crazy.” He shot back just as fast, his forgotten nausea crept back with a vengeance. “I’m shweet on you, shweetheart.”

“You’re protective over him.” She pointed out, and she closed the toilet cover with the toe of her ratty tennis shoes that she grew out of two years ago. He almost expected her to say; _The way that Bill Denbrough is protective over me._ He wished then, that she hadn’t closed the lid of the toilet. “He hates you for it, you know.”

Richie smiled, dry and toothless to stare back up at her. “He’s a real firecracker.”

She looked at him, looked _through him_ maybe, and took another drag from her cigarette. It wasn’t anymore than a smoking nub at that point, but Beverly Marsh never let a cigarette go to waste. She stubbed it out against the tank, leaving behind black ash residue that she would surely have to clean before her parents got back home. “A’yuh.”

The nausea from _(you’re sweet on him—- he hates you for it)_ the beer was making his head spin, he slowly leaned back against the tiles with the palms of his hands and tilted his face up towards the ceiling, stained yellow. “You know what I think?” He asked, though he didn’t wait for Beverly to respond. “I think everything gives you cancer.”

“You’re more like Eddie than he thinks you are.”

 _Does he think about me a lot?_ He didn’t say, and it was the hesitance to voice that question that should have been harmless that had him reaching for the lid of the toilet and dry heaving into the john. Beverly leaned down again, and wordlessly pushed his hair from his eyes.

_(She didn’t bring up Eddie again.)_

 

4.

 _The Falcon,_ which would in later years be known infamously for the community that laid claim to the town’s least disruptive bar, was located just before the outskirts of Derry. Unlike the few other pubs that resided in Derry, it wasn’t located in or near the city center. Business for The Falcon was slow in the late 1960’s for that reason, and wouldn’t pick up until the mid-1970’s— when the region’s gay community made itself home within the beer tavern’s brick walls. But, in the summer of 1968, the 70’s seemed as fictitious as they were unattainable.

 _“The Falcon: Grand Opening!”_ The banner that flapped in the evening summer breeze announced— the lettering, which was deep red when it was first hung over the pub’s threshold, had faded into a salmon pink.

To the townsfolk, the bar’s _Grand Opening_ had gone on for just over two years. And in those two years, hardly any of Derry’s residents were sold on _The Falcon—_ not when _Paddy’s,_ which was across the street from the town’s pharmacy and was the town’s oldest pub, had been open since 1943. But to Richie Tozier, _The Falcon_ was brand new. He _wanted_ brand new, certainly more than he wanted to run into Butch Bowers’ old drinking buddies having _Budweiser_ as an early bird special.

And Christ, it _was_ early.

The sun was up, which meant it was too fucking early for drinks. At least, it was too early for the drinks that Richie was planning on having. But there he was anyways, staring at that two year old banner with a brand new bottle of whiskey that he snagged from the corner store tucked into the back of his jeans.

“Believe it or not,” Ben Hanscom, with a voice that was twangy and smooth, spoke as he clapped a hand down on Richie’s shoulder. If it had been anyone aside from Ben, he may have flinched away from the hand in his surprise. But it was Ben Hanscom who invited Richie out to be his drinking buddy at a bar that was unfamiliar to the both of them. “The drinks are in _there,_ not out here.”  
  
A smile tipped Richie’s lips, he pulled the whiskey bottle from the back of his pants and thrust it towards the man who stood just behind him. His gaze never strayed from _The Falcon’s_ threshold. “It’s like you’ve never met me, Haystack. Where Richie Tozier goes— the drinks follow.”  
  
“So do the problems.” Eddie Kaspbrak’s voice, clipped and modulated as it was, did come as a surprise to Richie. His head of brown curls whipped around then, and his stomach clenched when he caught sight of the asthmatic standing next to the white Thunderbird he sat on while it was parked in Mike Hanlon’s front yard. He was stiff as a board, and the friendly smile he was aiming for was terse and uncertain. As if he expected Richie to be angry at him for showing up uninvited.  
  
“Gee Haystack, if I woulda known we were bringing chaperones I coulda brought Stan.” Richie drawled, he playfully yanked the whiskey bottle from the architect in training and shoved it back into his pants.  
  
“I’m not here to chaperone.” Eddie said, though it took visible effort for him to relax enough to make that statement believable. Petulantly, he added, _“And you owe me a drink.”_ _  
_  
“Drinks are on Ben, my love.” Richie honeyed, loathe to mention that the very drink he had on him he nicked from the liquor store. He diligently ignored the protesting huff that came from Ben Hanscom. “I’m sure I’ll find a creative way to pay you back.” He leered, in a voice that was as new as it was unpracticed— but it was sensual and it brought heat to Eddie's thin face and he was certain in that moment it was a voice he was going to keep. As little good as his voices were doing him these days, he wasn’t sure it mattered.  
  
“Eddie’s our chauffeur.” Ben added, as way of explanation. “He thought it best we didn’t try walking home.”  
  
“Then I guess I owe you two.” Eddie didn’t meet his gaze while he spoke, opting to roll his eyes and dig the heels of his loafers into the dirt. “Is that right?”  
  
“You don’t owe me nuthin’ Rich.” Maybe he meant for it to sound like a dismissal, and it would have, if Eddie’s voice hadn’t sounded so resigned— _reverent,_ alongside that. It was familiar, but not in this context. Richie could only ever remember Eddie speaking to him that way after one of his spats with Bowers, when Eddie would slap a bandaid on his split brow and a bottle of aspirin into his bloodied palm and Richie would say— _“Thanks Eds.”_ It was only then that Richie would see that haughty expression drop off Eddie’s thin face to be replaced by a soft gaze that he burned into his memory to preen over again and again. _“You don’t hafta thank me, Richie. You would do the same for me.”_  
  
It felt like a real accomplishment, any time he got Eddie to look at him like that. All that shit that Eddie talked and he _still_ gave Richie those furtive glances, like slapping bandages on his war wounds was just par for the course. It made the bruises hurt, just that much less.  
  
This time around, there was no Bowers. And the only war wounds Richie had wasn’t anything that could be covered by a bandage. The veneration Eddie presented him with, he hadn’t _earned_ it. Nauseated, suddenly, he realized that perhaps those small moments of hero worship weren’t made to make him feel accomplished. Rather, it was Eddie who needed to feel accomplished. Eddie, who needed to feel like he hadn’t just sat there and watched Richie get the wind knocked out of him without helping. Without giving him an aspirin and telling him to never go antagonizing Bowers again.  
  
_You don’t owe me nuthin’ either, Eds._ Richie didn’t think he could voice that thought aloud if he tried. He wasn’t no Bill Denbrough, after all, and he was damned selfish when he wanted to be.  
  
Late in the afternoon as it was, there should have been more than just one other patron in _The Falcon._ And calling the man, who had fallen asleep on top of the pool table with a puddle of drool beneath his cheek, a ‘patron’ was generous. He was likely a regular that the staff didn’t have the heart to wake up and kick out. Not like it mattered anyways, that snoring drunk was likely the only person going to touch that table anytime soon. It was clean, and well kept, but the floor sometimes creaked with the threat of giving and the mousetraps in every corner weren’t as shadowed as they probably should have been. The bar needed all of the money it could get— and there was some guilt when Richie would pull out his flask to take a sip of it— but he was always kind enough to do it when the staff wasn’t looking.  
  
“How was Los Angeles?” Ben asked— nothing but good intentions and a curious smile. The beer between his fingers _(craftsman’s fingers, architect’s fingers)_ was well over half empty, condensation trickled down the sides and onto the flat grain wood of the bar. He was keeping the weight off, Richie noticed. Hell, maybe he was still running track and field like he did in high school— between Algebra courses, even. Richie knew fuck all about college, and these days he knew fuck all about Ben Hanscom. Teasing and harmless, Ben added, “Is it everything you dreamed it would be?”  
  
“Oh, it’s everything.” Richie tittered, he went to take a sip of his own beer and came up empty. He couldn’t have dreamed up Los Angeles if he tried, though it seemed less and less realistic as his days in Derry would soon become _weeks._ Idly, he wondered if he would remember what Tammy Davis looked like after a couple more months in Maine. He wasn’t sure he wanted to, anymore. “You’d love it, redheads come by the millions over there.”  
  
Ben huffed, sheepish but otherwise unperturbed. “It’s still that obvious?”  
  
“Not everybody has my prowess in subtlety.” Richie smiled, and smiled wider still when Eddie scoffed from his barstool. “See, Haystack, here’s how it goes,” Ben, looking no less convinced than Eddie sounded, raised a placating eyebrow. With his empty bottle, he pointed the rim in Ben’s face, and the blond went decidedly cross eyed trying to follow the movement. “You cool it on the romantic declarations of love and the poems sprinkled with glitter—”  
  
“I appreciate it, but I’m not looking for romantic advice, Richie.” Ben looked relaxed, certain about himself even when he said, “I’m good on that front.”  
  
“I’m not giving you advice for _kicks,_ Haystack. I have your best interests at heart here, honest.” He paused, and replayed what Ben said in his mind once more before he heard it. _“Well I’ll be damned._ You married Bev while I was gone, didn’tcha? I thought for sure your balls wouldn’t be fully developed until you hit thirty. And I gotta tell you buddy, thirty was _wishful thinking_ on my part. Good Christ, did you make one of these chuckleheads your best man?”  
  
“Good Lord.” Eddie grumbled, his mouth was muffled from behind his hands— which he had, at some point while Richie was talking, buried his face into. Ben’s skin was flushed a dusky pink by that point, and he looked some combination of horrified and near hysterics. “Beep beep.”  
  
“That doesn’t answer my question.” Richie pointed out, just as the bartender set down two more beers in front of himself and Ben.  
  
“I’m not even wearing a _ring,_ Rich.” Ben whispered, perhaps afraid that Beverly may hear him all the way from Chicago. His face only grew darker pink with every word he spoke. “Of course we’re not married. We’re barely even...” He gestured helplessly, before taking a frighteningly deep chug from out of his beer bottle. “Fucking-A, leave it to Richie Tozier to have me stuttering like I’m Big Bill Denbrough.”  
  
Richie simpered wickedly. “Well darling, this mouth can do a lot more than talk trash if you want to really stammer.”  
  
“You’re foul.” Eddie groaned, his head was still cradled between his palms. He let his hands fall to the countertop next to his untouched beer, and turned his head to frown at Richie. It poorly concealed the fear that tightened his lips, or the way his eyes darted from Richie— to the bartender, who had certainly heard their entire conversation. “Quit bugging him, would you? Nothing’s changed.”  
  
“Nothing’s changed.” Richie mused, and he cracked a tipsy smile at the strange look Eddie fixed on him. “I dig it Eds, I do, but you halfta know that ain’t true, my love.”  
  
He tapped his fingers against the tabletop, looking contemplatively at the water drizzling down the brown tinted neck. “For starters, you drive around in a hot rod.”  
  
Eddie rolled his eyes, and when he tucked his face into his hands again, Richie knew it was to hide his smile. “Well you’re the same old asshole, Richie Tozier.” He mumbled, and Richie thought that maybe— this was better than those looks of hero worship ever were.

 

5.

Months before Richie Tozier found himself scraping his measly belongings into a suitcase, and hitchhiking from Los Angeles to Derry on nothing but the change he had in his pocket— his girlfriend found him with his head in the toilet and foamy vomit dribbling from his lips. There were pills, round white things that looked small and _entirely harmless_ when cradled in the palm of his hand. Those pills were what he got in place of a check, his payment for his weekday nights spent at the only comedy club in Los Angeles that would book him. He could have demanded a real payment but he knew that he— Richie Tozier, twenty year old funny-man— wouldn’t ever see what he was owed in his pocket.  
  
And damn it he _needed_ that gig, he needed it more than he needed a couple extra bucks in his pocket. He took the pills, and then he _took_ the pills. Because Richie Tozier would be damned to hell if he let his due go to waste.  
  
The beer he chased it with was warm, and the flavor was nothing short of god awful but he figured he wasn’t drinking it to savor it anyways. He lit a cigarette, and laid spread eagle on his shared mattress and thought about Beverly Marsh running her thin fingers through his bangs. It could have been the pills _(it was)_ or the alcohol _(it was)_ or the name Beverly Marsh _(it was)_ — but it took no more than twenty minutes before he could taste the tell tale flavor of bile in the back of his throat.  
  
Tammy screamed when she found him, and what a sight he must have been to entice that horrifying sound from her. He was trembling, he knew, and spit the color of beer was seeping from between his lips even after the heaving stopped. The worst of it was over by then, and he mumbled again and again that _I’m okay—_ that _you need to stop crying so loud Tams, someone’ll call the cops._ _  
_  
Later, after he had picked himself up on quaking legs and leaned against the bathroom sink as Tammy force fed him glass upon glass of water, she looked up at him with wet eyes— rimmed with mascara— and said, “All I could see were the whites of your eyes.” Her lower lip shook. “I thought you were dead, Rich.”  
  
“Yew can’t get rid’a me that easy, my love.” His throat ached something fierce, and his teasing tone fell flat with the way his voice sounded as if he gargled barbed wire.  
  
Tammy hadn’t cracked a smile. He saw the way her eyes drifted lifelessly from his, to the medicine cabinet behind his head and he knew the conversation was over. “There’s Vitamin B6 in the cabinet, _take it.”_ _  
_  
He could have argued, he _usually_ did. That the vitamins didn’t work for him _damn it,_ that just because the vitamins cured Tammy’s pregnant Aunt’s morning sickness didn’t mean they would fix his terminal technicolor yawn. Those arguments always ended in Richie rolling over anyways, he took the vitamins wordlessly while Tammy watched and waited— a glass of water in between her fingers, ready for him when he needed it.  
  
That was the moment she stopped smiling at him like she loved him _(maybe it was the moment she stopped loving him, but he never liked to think about their last few months together that way.)_ She became guarded after that, no longer did she feel safe with Richie— not because she feared _him,_ but because she feared _for_ him. He could have assured her, told her not to worry about those damned pills— the boss was paying in cash now. But if it wasn’t the pills, it was the liquor and if it wasn’t the liquor, it would surely be _something. It didn’t have to be a drug._  
  
He went without a fight.  
  
It was Eddie Kaspbrak who found— it was Eddie Kaspbrak who went looking for him this time around. In his nauseated state, he managed to fumble his way off of the bar’s bathroom floor and onto the toilet. His eyes were shut, and his head eventually lolled backwards so far that he made himself comfortable with the back of his head against the toilet tank and his long legs spread out and spanning the bathroom stall’s tiled floor. The vomiting had long since finished when the stall, which Richie hadn’t bothered locking, creaked open as Eddie pushed at it with the toe of one of his loafers.  
  
It was Eddie, of course it was Eddie, and he didn’t have to open his eyes to know it. “Occupied.” He croaked. Against the sticky tiles, Eddie’s loafers sounded like the ripping of duct tape with every step he took. Richie cracked his eyes open, and smiled and smiled as charmingly as possible at the man staring down at him with a deceptively blank face. “The urinal is behind you, dear. On the wall.”  
  
Eddie stared blankly for another moment, before he huffed out a sigh and yanked off a few squares of toilet paper from the roll and began to dab Richie’s sweaty forehead with it. It took every last bit of energy Richie had not to lean into the contact. “You couldn’t have found a cleaner place to get sick in?”  
  
“Next time I need to blow chunks I’ll aim for your lap, Eds.” He laughed when Eddie rolled up the sweaty toilet paper only to lob it right back in his face.  
  
“Come on, get up, I’m taking you home.” Eddie paused, and did one quick sweep with his eyes around the tiny stall they were both crammed into. “At the very least, I’m taking you to a cleaner bathroom.”  
  
“Party’s over?”  
  
“Isn’t that what usually happens when someone pukes?” Eddie wasn’t much of a partier. “It’s four in the afternoon, and you’ve already drunk yourself sick.”  
  
“I’ve been drunker.” Richie pointed out, but he was only arguing to argue. Riding around Derry with Eds was preferable to sitting in this sad little pub any longer, even if it meant pulling over on the side of the road for Richie to puke again.  
  
“I remember.” Eddie said coolly, and Richie let his eyes fall close to conceal his wince. “But you just called the bartender Wentworth, and your face is green. We’re leaving.”  
  
“He was fatherly.” Richie defended, though it was weak. He shifted on the toilet, and seated straight he could feel the throbbing between his eyes a little more intimately. He took a moment to regain his bearings, dizzy as he was, and he noticed Eddie’s hands twitching towards him every time he swayed. Wryly, he asked, “Are you coddling me?” The crease between Eddie’s eyebrows deepened, and his cheeks took on an unflattering red shade. “Didn’t you usually leave that for Sonia?”  
  
“Don’t be an asshole.” Eddie grumbled, and all hesitation was thrown out the window as he grabbed Richie beneath one of his elbows and hauled him to his feet. “Just lay off the alcohol, I like you even less like this.”  
  
They made their way to the sink, and the cold faucet water that he splashed against his face felt revitalizing on his heated skin. He lapped at the stream of water like a man dying of heat stroke, and snorted a good portion of it up his nose when he glanced into the mirror and saw the disgust written across Eddie’s face. “You didn’t have to stick around, you know.” Richie said through a mouthful of sink water, he gargled and spit just to see Eddie’s scowl deepen. “I’m not exactly hiding in here.”  
  
“Well, last time I saw you drunk you were face down in a ditch. Thought I should save you the humiliation of letting me find you face down on this disgusting floor.”  
  
Richie snickered, and shut the faucet off. Droplets of water rolled down his face and dripped off of his chin onto the front of his button up— ironically, the psychedelic array of colors decorating his ill fitting shirt closely resembled puke. “It wouldn’t be all that different from the good old days. ‘Cept back then it was Bowers and Vic Criss that used to put me in ditches, not Jack Daniels.”

“Because you antagonized them into beating the brakes off’a you.” Eddie grumbled, he had gone pale at the mention of the old Bowers gang. He looked older than he really was in that moment, _tired._ Richie wondered if that’s how he looked when he was doing his own _reminiscing._

But antagonize Richie _did._ It would always put him in the exact same place, with a smattering of bruises on his skin and a guilty conscience as he trudged his way to Eddie Kaspbrak’s house to lick his wounds. That was before Henry Bowers got locked away in Juniper, though not long after he was replaced by another group of greasy haired bullies that had a vendetta for Richie Tozier the size of Omaha. Getting the brakes beat off of him once a week was no less enticing than a big ol’ bottle of whiskey, especially when the gold at the end of _that_ particular rainbow was a trip to the Kaspbrak residence— _“You’re such a kook, Richie Tozier!”_ Eddie would crow, though never loud enough to disturb his mother downstairs watching her programs. _“One of these days you’re going to get yourself_ killed!”

The sting of antiseptic and the prod of Eddie’s fingertips against the back of his skull to check for concussions as he tittered over Richie’s many _many_ injuries was comforting— the way conversations with his Old Man was comforting or sharing a can of beer with Beverly Marsh was comforting.

 _“What I was s’posed to let ‘em call us fairies and not do nothing about it?”_ Richie would ask, though he didn’t really care that those assholes called him a fairy. But he never liked the way Eddie would freeze like a deer in the headlights when they started throwing around words like _candy-ass_ and _girly boy._

“I always hated it that you did that.” Eddie admitted, his eyes were millions of miles away _(somewhere in 1958 it looked like, the Barrens maybe)_ but in the mirror he stared blankly at the red and brown stripes adorning his yellow polo shirt. “Guess I just assumed you would jump between Henry’s fist and my face because you thought I couldn’t handle getting knocked around like you or Big Bill or Mike could.”

“You always did enjoy pouring rubbing alcohol into my open wounds.”

Eddie grinned then, and he looked all of twenty one years old again. The tired crease between his brows smoothed out, and the bags beneath his eyes didn’t seem nearly as purple as they had minutes prior. He laughed, and shoved his shoulder up against Richie’s— and Richie shoved right back. “I guess I did.” He giggled, and their eyes met in the mirror again. “This is kooky, isn’t it?”

“Which part?” Richie asked, pleased and prideful over making that tension melt from Eddie’s face.

“Dunno… probably that I’m in my twenties and I’m still babysitting Richie Tozier so he doesn’t accidentally get himself killed.”

“Who shaid anything about an _accshident_ , tootsh.” Richie droned in his Humphrey Bogart impression. “I’ll die the same way all the big wigsh, do… in a blaze of glory.” He paused, and looked to his left to see Eddie staring up at him with no small amount of exasperation. “Beshides shweetheart, even your cute face couldn’t shtop the inevitable.”

Eddie hummed, and shoved his shoulder against Richie’s again. “Did I ever tell you how _terrible_ that impression is?”

Richie shoved his shoulder back. “It may have come up once or twice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me forever to put out (I am, deeply sorry) but if it’s any consolation— I should be posting regularly from here on out. Expect the next chapter within the next few weeks.


	4. village of the damned

_“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”_

_(The Fellowship of the Ring)_

 

1.

Had anyone asked Beverly Marsh what she thought a reunion between herself and Richie Tozier were to look like, she would have laughed. _“Knowing Richie,”_ She would have said, and the green in her hazel eyes always danced with hidden laughter when she said his name. _“It would be something of a blood bath.”_ She would fail to mention how often she asked herself that very same question, and how often she would find herself unable to come up with an answer. She deliberated the likeliness of Richie Tozier ever returning to Derry, or if he too would be just like the cornucopia of people who passed through Derry— another relic of her childhood that would fade with everyday, whose name got blurrier and blurrier around the edges as the months passed.   
  
Her friendship with Richie Tozier still had a place in her memory, unlike so much of her childhood in Derry, and she found herself determined to keep him there.   
  
The summer of 1966. It began one year after the group of seven went their separate ways, beginning with Richie and ending with Mike. Seven months since Alvin Marsh died quietly in his sleep, leaving his wife Elfrida to scrounge together what little money they had between them for a funeral. A handful of weeks since Beverly Marsh arrived in Derry, Maine to spend her first summer break at home after a grueling freshman year at the University of Illinois.   
  
That summer was the first of many breaks that the entirety of the Losers’ Club would spend together, sans Richie. It was the first time Beverly had set foot in Derry since departing the summer prior. As she didn’t have the money to travel from Illinois to Maine in the midst of her father’s funeral, though that was a relief in it’s own right.   
  
Throughout the school year, she had kept in close contact with Mike Hanlon— and despite the physical distance between herself and all of her friends, she kept herself well informed. “His folks don’t know where he is either.” Mike told her with a sigh that crackled through the phone. She was in the midst of studying for finals when she decided to give him a call, and like many of their conversations in those days that overlooked the summer, they were talking about Richie Tozier. “He hasn’t called.”   
  
“Yet.” Beverly added, she absentmindedly scratched Richie’s name across the top of her lined paper. The page was blank, aside from the blue ink that spelled out _Richie Tozier_ in Beverly’s sprawling handwriting— her professors would scowl at her disregard of studying. “He can’t just _disappear.”_ _  
_   
Her dorm mate, a blonde woman only a year or so older than Beverly by the name of Kay McCall, arched a neatly plucked brow. Questioningly, she pointed to the name Beverly scribbled over and over, and mouthed _“Boyfriend?”_ Beverly rolled her eyes, and shook her head no. _“Not mine.”_ She mouthed back pointedly, and grinned at the disbelief tugging at Kay’s shapely lips.   
  
“Stanley would beg to differ.” Mike spoke again, and Beverly found herself scoffing into the phone’s receiver.   
  
“Stanley’s a pessimist.” She corrected, albeit fondly. Kay McCall shot her another startled look, and Beverly wondered if the other woman found it strange that the company she kept consisted entirely of men.   
  
“He calls himself a realist.” The smile in Mike’s voice could be heard from one thousand miles away. “But so do I.”   
  
“So what do _you_ think?” Beverly hummed, though she already knew what Mike Hanlon’s answer would be.   
  
Mike paused, and because it was Mike, Beverly knew that he was truly thinking it over. That he was looking at the question objectively, like Stan would. He was looking at it subjectively, like Beverly would. And when he was finished thinking, he would still have the same answer he started with, “He can’t disappear forever.”   
  
But that was then— and with the fourth of July looming, the lucky seven’s shared outlook wasn’t entirely hopeful. It had been a long year without seeing hide nor hair of Richie Tozier, but Beverly was nothing if she wasn’t sanguine. And whether or not Richie liked it, he had _roots_ in Derry. Roots that Eddie Kaspbrak, who would rather spend his summer nights in the Derry Inn than in Pennsylvania with his mother, didn’t have. Roots that Beverly Marsh, who told herself she would never set foot in Derry again until she was certain her father was _long_ dead, didn’t have. Richie Tozier had folks. Those folks cared about him, and he cared about them right back.   
  
It wasn’t until Beverly was standing on the Tozier’s porch, a covered casserole that her mother snagged from the restaurant she waitressed at held in one hand and the knuckles on her other hand rapping against the front door, that she realized just how ridiculous it was to think a familiar face and a cold plate of macaroni would make up for a teenaged son up and leaving without so much as a goodbye kiss.   
  
The front door, a rich red thing with a golden mail slot, swung open on creaking hinges to reveal Margaret Tozier standing on the opposite side. The woman was smiling that kind motherly smile Beverly had become so closely acquainted with when she was in high school, she didn’t remember it being so watery. Beverly thought, _briefly,_ that maybe she should have created a feasible explanation for why she appeared on the Tozier’s door step after a year in Chicago. She didn’t have to worry over that for very long.   
  
Maggie stepped over the threshold and pulled Beverly into a hug, swift enough that the bowl of casserole fumbled in Beverly’s grasp and clattered to the ground between their feet. It _shouldn’t_ have surprised her, Margaret Tozier had always been a hugger. As had her son.   
  
“My,” Maggie pulled away, a nervous titter followed the single word. She crouched to the ground to pick up the fallen casserole, blissfully unharmed from inside the singular Tupperware bowl that Elfrida Marsh kept. “How are you, dear? What brings you to this side of town?”   
  
There was no condescension in her voice, no unnecessary lingering on the side of town that Beverly resided in. It wasn’t the _‘Why aren’t you in poor town, girl?’_ that Beverly had grown to expect from adults. “I’m doing fine, Mrs. Tozier.” She spoke softly, the woman straightened and Beverly reached out to steady her with a hand beneath her elbow. “I’m sorry for dropping in unexpected...”   
  
“Oh, it’s no problem at all!” Maggie waved a dismissive hand through the air. She held the Tupperware against her chest in a firm grip, as if she feared she may drop it again. “I do appreciate the company, won’t you come in?”   
  
Maggie was just as Beverly remembered from the many summer evenings she spent in the Tozier’s backyard with Richie, drinking lemonade that his mother made and watching the sun set. _“She likes you more than me.”_ Richie liked to say back then, when Beverly’s glass of lemonade would come with a little more ice than his. He would smile in that cheeky way of his, and clang his glass against Beverly’s. _“Maybe if we’re lucky, your old man’ll forget you’re over here and you can just live with us.”_ It was a childish thing to wish for, but it was a wish that Richie clung to for years to come— and secretly, so did Beverly.   
  
“How do you like Chicago?” _Word spread fast in Derry._ Beverly took a seat at the kitchen table, and watched Maggie move around like a small whirlwind. There was a shakiness to her every movement— her hands trembled as she placed the casserole in the refrigerator, her eyelids fluttered as she poured a glass of water for Beverly, _and a glass of wine for herself._ Perhaps she thought Beverly, like Richie, would up and disappear if she didn’t move fast enough. “You’re attending college, is that right?”   
  
“I am.” Beverly paused, looked for the words that would encompass her feelings on her new home and she laughed aloud when she found them. Maggie’s smile widened at the sound. “Chicago is... _windy.”_ Maggie placed the glass of water before her, and she mumbled a quiet thanks. “It’s crowded. Very different from Derry.”   
  
Mrs. Tozier took a seat across from Beverly with the glass of red wine in between her hands, and a tepid smile on her lips— which were a matching red. It didn’t quite mask the manic look in her eyes, a look that Richie must have picked up from her, because she looked so much like him in that moment. Beverly’s chest ached with nostalgia at that realization. “And you like that?” Maggie asked, she sipped from her glass. There was no judgment coming from her, and Beverly had to wonder why Richie thought he couldn’t tell her that he was leaving. “The change?”   
  
“Not being in Derry for a year, was nice.” It didn’t quite answer the question, and it was _vague_ enough to be considered dismissive. But Margaret did nothing more than nod her head, her eyes full of understanding. And wisdom, the kind of wisdom that you didn’t often see in Derry adults. As if she understood that Beverly had an attachment to Derry, but it wasn’t really Derry that she was attached to. _(It was her roots.)_ _  
_   
_“Ah,_ that’s right, you weren’t at the funeral.” Mrs. Tozier said it like a fact, and not like a retribution. Beverly tensed regardless. “I am incredibly sorry about your father, dear. It was much too early a death.”   
  
_It couldn’t have come sooner._ She hadn’t realized she voiced that thought aloud until Maggie Tozier dissolved into unrestrained bright laughter. Her laugh sounded like a wind chime blowing in a soft breeze, and modestly she hid her smile behind the half empty glass of red. “You remind me of my son.” She sighed, melancholic. The woman rolled the glass in slow circles, and the red wine inside swirled round and round against the sides. Beverly hadn’t spoken for too long, and Maggie looked up apologetically. _“I am sorry._ I shouldn’t be drinking so early, but I don’t like to drink in front of Wentworth.”   
  
“I don’t mind.” Beverly said, and she meant it.   
  
Margaret smiled again, and set her glass down on the table in front of her. There was a sudden tension lingering in the air, and the silence between the two women had transformed the room from comfortable and homey to... to... distantly, thunder crackled outside. The smell of ozone seeped into the house from the opened window in the kitchen, and the white curtains began to flap in the wind that was making the trees in the backyard creek and sway. “I don’t know where he is.” Richie’s mother said, and her eyes filled with unshed tears. “If that’s what you came here to ask, I apologize. But I know as much as I told Stanley Uris.”   
  
“That’s not what I came here to ask.” Beverly spoke, she smiled sheepishly at the surprised look she got from Maggie. “I’m just here to drop off that casserole, and to visit.”   
  
“You’re sweet.” Maggie nodded, shakily. “If only he would visit, then the three of us could _share_ that casserole.”   
  
Beverly’s freckled hands cupped the untouched glass of water Maggie set in front of her. Condensation trickled down the glass and onto the mahogany table. It was in that moment, when the bottom of the gray clouds outside dropped and the rain began to pour that Beverly realized— Margaret Tozier was holding out hope. Just like herself, and just like Mike Hanlon, Richie’s mother expected Richie to come back. “If he calls, Mrs. Tozier, you’ll be the first to know.”   
  
“Call me Maggie.” The woman grinned, and the tears in her eyes made way for the sparkling shine of mirth. Through the buckets of rain, the sun peaked through the clouds. “And likewise, my dear.”

 

2.

In the summer of 1968–  two weeks after Richie Tozier arrived in Derry, two weeks before the fourth of July and two years since Beverly’s first _(of many)_ visits to Maggie Tozier, the phone in Kay McCall and Beverly Marsh’s shared apartment began to ring. Kay McCall, seated on the cherry red loveseat in their modest living room reading the newest issue of Vogue, glanced towards the kitchen where the telephone was mounted on the wall. Her gaze slowly drifted from the shrill telephone to Beverly Marsh, who sat on the fire escape outside with a cigarette in hand. The window was wide open, letting in the almost constant breeze Chicago provided, but far enough away that the smell of smoke couldn’t permeate the furniture.

“Are you planning on answering that?” Beverly asked, she kept her hazel eyes on the Chicago skyline— the evening illuminated her face with all of the creamy orange that came with the sun setting.

“Me?” Kay scoffed, she flipped the page of her Vogue monthly. Though, she hadn’t really been reading ever since the phone began to ring. “You know just as well as I do that it’s probably your boyfriend calling.”

Beverly was smiling around her cigarette, which she puffed on artificially. “He calls at eight.” Kay stared. “It’s seven thirty.”

The shrieking chime ceased, and Beverly continued to smoke her cigarette and watch the sun fade behind the buildings with every passing second. That is, until the phone began to ring again.

Pointedly, Kay looked at Beverly from behind the cover of her magazine, which she used to cover her blossoming grin. The redhead groaned aloud, and stamped out her cigarette on the fire escape before climbing through the hole the opened window made. “You win, McCall.” She grabbed the window frame, and slammed it shut. If only to hear the usual soft thump of it’s closing overpower the droll ring coming from the kitchen.

It wasn’t Ben Hanscom. Their relationship, as slow paced and long distance as it was, was also brand new. He called at eight o’clock every night, and he was never a moment too late— _or a moment too early._

She assumed it was a bill collector, or one of Kay’s nosy aunts who lived in Kentucky. The two girls got at least one call every month from one of Kay’s aunts, always asking the same invasive questions about Kay’s love life _(or lack thereof.)_ Beverly at least, understood why Kay wouldn’t want to pick up the phone.

The yellow telephone jerked and jolted with every ring from it’s position mounted into the wall. Beverly always took great care not to yank too hard when picking up the phone, not like Kay, who yanked on the rotary so fiercely that Beverly was sure the damned thing would rip itself from the wall one of these days. “Beverly Marsh speaking.” She pronounced against the canary colored receiver, the paint around the mouthpiece was chipping and the bronze color beneath was peeking through. From the living room, Beverly heard Kay chuckle at her formality.

“Beverly, dear, how are you?” And after two years of regularly speaking to the woman, Beverly could place Margaret Tozier’s voice just about anywhere.

“Maggie.” The tense set of Beverly’s shoulders loosened, as relief that she wouldn’t be speaking to one of Kay’s aunts set in. “I’m fine,” _Surprised to hear from_ _you, but fine._ “Are you okay?”

“Better than okay.” Sarcasm wasn’t a tool that Margaret Tozier often used, as Beverly had grown to discover over the years. _It’s facetious,_ Maggie explained to her as the two of them pulled weeds from the Tozier’s garden in the backyard. _It’s meant to be, my love._ Wentworth had responded, as he and Eddie Kaspbrak fiddled with the sputtering rotary lawn mower. Maybe it wasn’t sarcasm that Beverly thought she was hearing in Maggie’s voice, but it certainly wasn’t honesty— it was _facetious._ “Oh, I can see you worrying yourself from here, darling. Don’t mind me, I’m perfectly alright.”

“If you’re sure.” Beverly chuckled, abruptly nervous.

The line was silent, for long enough that Beverly began to question whether or not there had been a disconnect. It wasn’t uncommon, with long distance calls to Maine to lose the line. But Maggie sighed, and the defeated sound crackled against Beverly’s ear. “It’s Richie.” The world as Beverly knew it tilted on it’s axis, and she smacked a palm atop the counter next to her to brace herself. The spinning stopped, if only momentarily, and Beverly was silently thankful that she found her voice and not the cold tiles of the kitchen floor which she was almost certainly going to pass out on.

“Is _he_ alright?”

“He’s in Derry.” She said this in way of an actual answer to the question, and Beverly hadn’t missed that. “I’m terribly sorry I didn’t call sooner, dear. He showed up on mine and Wentworth’s front porch days ago with every belonging he left with, I suppose I’ve done needed this time to process,”

“Stanley, sweet boy that he is, told me you were coming home—” _Home,_ Beverly thought with no small amount of cynicism, _Derry has never been any home of mine._ “After the fourth, he appeared… troubled when I asked him if he mentioned Richie when he spoke to you.”

“I guess he would have assumed Ben told me.” Beverly pressed the heel of her palm against her eyes, and pushed until stars exploded behind her closed lids. In the back of her mind, she began to run the costs of buying a one way ticket to Bangor International versus how much it would cost in gas to get her car from Chicago to Derry. And _Jesus,_ did she hate driving at night— if she were lucky, perhaps Kay would offer to help her pay for a flight.

“To be fair to those boys,” Maggie began patiently, as if halfway across the country she could sense Beverly’s frustration. In that moment, Beverly loved her more than she ever loved her father. “They haven’t seen much of Richie since he showed in Derry.”

The money didn’t matter, not really, she had decided the moment Maggie spoke Richie’s name. “I’ll be in Derry by tomorrow.”

From the other end of the line, Maggie laughed. “Don’t feel obligated to come, he will still be here after the fourth.”

It wasn’t an obligation, it was _Richie._ And as much as Derry would never be a home to her, those idiotic boys she spent her childhood with _would be_. Alongside that, she wasn’t inclined to believe Mrs. Tozier when she claimed that Richie was in Derry to stay. She trusted the woman’s judgment, trusted her the way she trusted her own mother— but Richie Tozier was unpredictable, and unreliable. And Beverly Marsh would be damned if she didn’t get to see him again after three years of radio silence.

“You’re leaving?” Kay McCall asked, her cobalt eyes were huge and her Vogue magazine was closed. Beverly didn’t respond, as she was too busy making a beeline to her bedroom and to the empty suitcase that she had kicked beneath her queen sized bed. Haphazardly, she began pulling clothes from her dresser drawers and tossing them into the case. Standing over her, Kay stood with the monthly tucked beneath her armpit and bewilderment on her face. “Is this your way of telling me that I’m spending the fourth of July _alone,_ Beverly Marsh?”

Apologetically, Beverly glanced up at her roommate with an armful of white button ups that she bought after landing a job as a retail manager at the Macy’s on State Street. “You know I wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t important.”

“Oh, I know.” Kay stood, an unmoving looming presence watching Beverly cram her suitcase full. Her thin arms were crossed, and the frown on her face deepened the lines next to the corners of her mouth. She realized that Kay wouldn’t budge until she was certain Beverly hadn’t lost her mind in those ten minutes she spent on the phone, and with a sigh, she ceased her furious cramming and looked up at Kay with a reassuring smile.

“I’m sorry.” The icy stare didn’t soften. “I’ll be back before Labor Day.” She promised, and then, the corners of Kay’s mouth did twitch.

“Not with all of that white you’re packing, you won’t be.”

For the first time since their relationship began, Beverly Marsh missed the regularly scheduled eight o’clock phone call to catch a plane from Chicago to Bangor International. She left with Kay McCall’s blessing, which was a kiss on the cheek and enough cash to pay for a plane back— if she needed to come back before the Fourth. It wasn’t until she was overlooking the lights in Chicago’s city from thirty thousand feet that she realized she missed Ben Hanscom’s call, and she hoped that Kay would just this once— answer that goddamn phone for her.

 

3.

At seven o’clock in Maine, eight o’clock Central time, the yellow cream colored phone sat silently in the wall as Kay McCall perched on the opened window sill watching every plane that passed overhead and wondering if Beverly was on it. The pages of her Vogue flapped in the Chicago wind. Halfway across the country, Ben Hanscom fell asleep in the backseat of Eddie Kaspbrak’s Thunderbird— with _The Falcon_ in the rearview mirror, and the sound of Richie Tozier’s incessant trashmouth lulling him to sleep.

By morning, it didn’t matter.

 

4.

Richie’s bedroom window was open; _again._ The repugnant stench of Derry, which carried into his room with every gust of wind, is what roused him from sleep. That, and the glaring orange puddle on the horizon. The sunrise flooded his bed with early morning light, and his head throbbed in reminder of what he spent his night doing rather than sleeping off his hangover. He threw his duvet over his head and effectively blocked the head splitting ray of light, but the foul stink of the sewers (of It, _his half conscious mind corrected. The sober, tired part of his brain shut that thought down.)_ lingered.   
  
He wanted to go back to sleep. If it was too goddamn early for breakfast, it was too early for Richie Tozier to confront his hangover. And all things considered, his method of confrontation was using the hair of the dog that bit him. It was an effective headache killer no doubt, but it did him no favors when he needed to function after a night _(or a day, beggars can’t be choosers)_ of heavy drinking.   
  
Another breeze rustled his duvet, and the barrier between himself and his window did nothing to prevent the thick smell from invading his nostrils. “Get a load of that _Derry air,_ folks.” With his face pressed against his pillow, the newscaster voice came out muffled. But it was still damned better than the Chet Huntley impression he blathered on and on with in the Barrens.   
  
“You’re back.” He startled so hard at the sound of another person in his bedroom that his hangover tucked tail and ran. Until he flung the blanket from over his head, and the gradually rising sun brought back the throbbing ache between his eyes with a terrible vengeance. With a jackrabbiting heart, he fumbled around the bed for his glasses and when his hands caught hold of the mangled pair tucked underneath his pillow he didn’t hesitate to push them onto and up the bridge of his nose.   
  
It was Beverly Marsh. Which he supposed, if he weren't so hungover, he would have known just by the sound of her voice. She was sitting on his windowsill with a cigarette between her lips, as if nothing had changed in the ten years since they first met— and she was merely dropping by the share the pack of Winston’s she stole from Mr. Marsh with Richie. _“Shit.”_ He slumped in his relief, and gave her the toothiest grin he could muster. “You couldn’a waited for a more reasonable time to stop by, God doesn’t even wake up this fucking early.”   
  
“It’s seven in the morning.” She replied glibly, but she was smiling around her smoke. “You’re back.” She repeated, as if that was all the excuse she needed for waking Richie up at the ass crack of dawn.   
  
And it was. “Back in the land of the living, shweets.”   
  
Deciding that his early morning nap would have to wait, he kicked the duvet to the floor and began scouting around for clothes that were passably clean. Beverly didn’t so much as flinch at his state of dress, but Richie hadn’t expected her to. Over the last decade, she saw far worse than Richie Tozier with the wine flu clad in nothing but boxer briefs. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be anywhere near Derry.”   
  
”Back in the village of the damned, it is.” He shot Beverly a coy look as he shimmied into a pair of jeans. Blessedly, not a pair that he puked on, but he was still no spring daisy.   
  
“Where have you been?” Smoke blew out of her nose as she spoke, and her easy tone was betrayed by the hard look in her eyes. It was a look that Richie most commonly associated with his parents, one that said _‘I’m not letting you mouth your way out of this one, little Rich.’_   
  
“Los Angeles.” He slid a button up onto his shoulders and decided not to bother with the buttons.   
  
“What a charmingly vague answer.” Beverly was still smiling, and when he stepped forward she offered him a cigarette like he knew she would. He flicked open his lighter, still sitting on the windowsill next to Beverly from his last cigarette and shot her a wink.   
  
“I’m a charming guy.”   
  
“You’re a spaz.” Another gust of wind whipped the loose strands of hair that fell from her ponytail around her face, the smell that hit Richie like a ton of bricks every time he caught a whiff didn’t seem to have any effect on her. The smell of their Winston’s were, at least, overpowering the city stink. Went and Maggie hated it that his room smelled like an ashtray, and he supposed that if  the odor of Derry lingered with them they wouldn’t mind his indoor smoking nearly as much. _“Why_ are you back?”   
  
The cigarette between his teeth bobbed as he laughed. “You didn’t miss me?”   
  
“Like a limb.” Was her response, all honesty and smiles and Richie thought that he missed her even worse than that of a missing limb. The nostalgia in her playful smirk packed one hell of a punch, and Richie’s throat seized with the sudden presence of a lump.   
  
”I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.” Her eyebrows shot up at his resigned answer, and the nonchalance he was trying to exude felt plastic. _“Fortunately,_ I _awh-_ lways carry a spare set‘a feathers.” His Foghorn Leghorn was one of his bits that hadn’t much improved over the years, but like all of his dormant memories of his childhood it came back like it had never left.   
  
“Ben was right,” For the first time in her life _(or for the first time that Richie could see it)_ Beverly Marsh stubbed out a cigarette before it was burned down to the filter. “You’re incorrigible.”   
  
Richie spluttered, he whipped his head to look at the side of her face— her face was angled towards the sky, but her lips were turned up in the corners. “Ain’t _no way_ Haystack said that.” The night before was still fresh in his mind, stolen sober moments played on a torturous loop. Eddie Kaspbrak’s soft smile as he turned up the radio to blare Buddy Holly, loud enough that Ben Hanscom kicked the back of his seat and sent the two men in the front into midnight hysterics, in particular. “I should know, I’m his favorite.”   
  
“Is that so?” Beverly asked, and her tone was just as teasing as Richie’s was but her face— expressive as it always had been— gave her away. _She was in love,_ and maybe he would get the chance to ask her about it someday.   
  
But today, “I sure as shit hope so.” There it was again, the kind gaze of adoration that Eddie gave him when he was sure Richie wasn’t looking. “Jury’s still out on where I stand with Spaghetti Head. I’m thinking by the end of the week I’ll be back in his top three.”

 _“Back_ in your top three?” Beverly’s hair whipped around her head as the wind picked up, and for maybe the millionth time Richie wondered how many lawns he would have to mow to buy her a pack of bobby-pins. The sewer stench didn’t seem half as hard to stomach in that moment as it had just minutes before. “You are in no way stupid enough to think you ever left.”

Based on the amused look Beverly settled on him, his effort to not visibly preen was failing miserably. “Yeah,” He put out his cigarette against the sill, and a smudge of black stained the white paint job. “But he’d never admit it.”

There was a comfortable silence between the two of them, and it gave Richie enough time to breathe in the last whiffs of smoke in the air before he would close his bedroom window and shove his face into a pillow. The sun was higher in the sky, and the yellow light of daytime did nothing to hide the purpling bags beneath Beverly Marsh’s eyes. He was certain he didn’t look much better, haggard as he knew he was, but guilt gnawed at him looking at the gauntness transforming her pretty face— he mused the possibility that she was regretting watching the sun rise with him, rather than waking up well rested and refreshed in Chicago.

“I’m glad you’re back.” She said, interrupting his internal monologue as if she could hear it herself. She glanced up at him with a tired tilt of her lips, and Richie found himself leaning forward to smack a kiss to the top of her head.

“You and me both, Red.” His eyes caught a liquor flask that he hadn’t bothered picking up off the floor, and suddenly wished that his only souvenir from Los Angeles wasn’t his determination to get himself killed before he hit thirty. He took one final deep breath, and shut his window.

 

5.

Beneath the red oak overlooking the Hanlon family farm, was a rickety tire swing attached to a fraying rope. The tire itself was in poor condition; torn in some places, filled with water from April showers and brown leaves from the transition to winter before that. Late June was the start of an oppressively sweltering summer, and Eddie Kaspbrak would choose plopping his ass down on a filthy tire swing over standing in direct sunlight any day. Even with the familiar smell of sunblock mingling with the distinct scent of a _Derry summer,_ and the faint sheen of grease smeared across his pale skin catching in the sunlight— he couldn’t find it in himself to stand in the middle of the farm and soak up the sun. _The sun causes cancer._ _  
_   
Besides, he preferred slipping into the ramshackle swing than making himself comfortable on the front porch. It was a work in progress still, had been since Will Hanlon started building it in 1963. Rusty nails reached out between the wooden boards like overgrown grass, and if Eddie stared at them long enough they looked as if they were stretching towards him. Ready to scratch his ankle and give him a bad case of tetanus.   
  
With the swing, his view of Mike Hanlon darting through the freshly cut grass with his dog following closely at his ankles was significantly better than it would have been if he had taken refuge on the porch. Mr. Chips was the dog’s name, _(Mr. Chips_ Junior. _Mike had corrected, solemnly when he first introduced him to Eddie.)_ and Eddie felt sick with guilt every time he pulled his knees up to his chest so the chipper dog wouldn’t graze his legs whenever he ran beneath the swing. “Sorry.” Eddie whispered to the dog when it stared up at him with his tongue lolling out of his mouth. Droll dribbled from his mouth into the dirt below Eddie’s feet, the earth there was well worn— just like the swing itself. “I’ve got allergies, boy.”   
  
Mr. Chips _(Junior)_ trotted back to Mike with his tail swinging behind him, like Eddie recoiling from his touch rather than scratching him behind his ears came as no shock. It made Eddie want to pet the dog all the more.   
  
The sun was at it’s highest point, when Eddie began to rock his body gently with the breeze. He wasn’t going to swing, _jeezum no,_ the rope was only hanging by the weakest of threads. But the swaying was nice, almost took his mind off of the stifling heat that shrouded the town. _“It’s a scorcher.”_ Were the first words to come from Will Hanlon’s mouth that morning, he spoke over a plate of eggs and a glass of orange juice. He grinned toothily at Eddie, resembling Mike so fiercely that Eddie had to blink away his shock. _“You boys outta enjoy the heat, won’t be here for very long.”_   
  
Eddie watched the golden fur of Mike Hanlon’s dog swish from side to side as he flew through fields of green towards his owner, tree branch in mouth, he tried not to feel like the envious child he used to be. Watching the other children play while his mother pinched his arm and hissed in his ear about how he was far too sickly for even one game of cops and robbers.   
  
Still, he didn’t make a move to join Mike Hanlon.   
  
_If Richie Tozier were here—_ he began to think, and he effectively silenced that train of thought before it could begin. _If Richie Tozier were here,_ he continued with a bitter flourish, _he would have a bottle of sauce tucked underneath his arm._ Anger was the safest emotion for his mind to settle on when it came to the likes of Richie. _Worry_ is what came next, and when he lingered on it he _ached_ for his old inhaler.   
  
Alongside that, when he peeled away the anger and the worry and the _(hurt)_ frustration that he usually got when he pictured Richie Tozier’s face, he found himself remembering the Presbyterian Church that Sonia used to drag him to on Sunday mornings. _It unsettled him._ He would find himself picturing Richie’s lopsided grin, and in a blink he would find himself staring down at his eleven year old reflection looking up at him from the warm water that he waded in before his baptism. _“You’re saved.”_ He would hear the pastor say, and he swore that sometimes he would see Richie’s reflection standing next to his in the water. _Wrong,_ another layer in the Russian nesting doll that was his feelings for Richie Tozier.   
  
Pushing the church from his mind, with great effort, he conjured up the memory of Richie Tozier spread out on the yellowing toilet seat from the night prior. His face had been chartreuse and beaded with sweat. When he opened his pale eyes from behind his horn-rimmed glasses, they were bloodshot. He looked like he may be sick _(again)_ and it was lucky for the both of them that he wasn’t, although he did appear more and more weary with every passing second.   
  
That too, was deeply unsettling.   
  
When his Thunderbird rattled to a stop in Richie’s driveway, he felt awkward and hot faced as he sputtered his way through asking Richie if he _had fun._ Richie just watched him flounder, smiling and sober, more sober than Eddie had seen him all day. He leaned over to ruffle and ruin Eddie’s neatly combed hair. “Thanks for the ride home, Eds.” The hand threaded through tufts of dark brown hair wandered idly to land on the back of Eddie’s red neck, where he gave a gentle squeeze. His hand lingered there, as if he was waiting for the asthmatic to smack his arm away. _But Eddie didn’t,_ not until he remembered the way that damned pastor smiled down at him and he just couldn’t let Richie touch him anymore. “Don’t let Ben drown in his own drool.”   
  
“‘M not gonna drown, Richie.” Ben Hanscom mumbled from the backseat, and Richie Tozier was gone again.   
  
He didn’t know quite how long he left his car idling in the street overlooking the Tozier home, but it was long enough that Ben lifted his head to groggily ask why they were stopped. He tore down the road at a speed faster than he typically liked to go.   
  
It was a bad train of thought, and he couldn’t have been more relieved when he spotted Mike Hanlon walking towards the tree. The tree branch was slotted in Mr. Chips mouth, who triumphantly trotted beside Mike to match his leisurely pace. Mike was grinning, and profusely sweating, and his visible exuberance was the mood lifter that Eddie knew he desperately needed. The canteen filled with water from the garden hose was propped against the side of the red oak, and Eddie watched in fond silence as Mike guzzled the water like a man dying of thirst. He let some of the cool droplets trickle down his heated skin.   
  
“Hot?” Eddie questioned teasingly.   
  
“Not so much anymore.” Mike answered contentedly, he ended the sentence with a refreshed smack of his lips. He tossed the emptied canteen into the grass and wiped his wet hands on the fronts of his blue jeans. “Hard to believe we used to run around in this heat day after day.”   
  
“It _was_ cooler in the Barrens.” Eddie defended, though he could hardly believe it himself. Even underneath the canopy of trees and surrounded by the water of the Kenduskeag stream, he couldn’t imagine it being _much_ cooler. Humid, certainly. But no less stifling. Richie Tozier liked to tease him back then, for slathering himself in Coppertone to spend a day in the shade. Crude as he was, he liked to ask if Eddie’s ass was as white as the bare bottom of the little girl on the Coppertone posters. He felt his fair share of vindication when Richie would show to the Barrens the very next day with pealing, irritated pink skin.   
  
That feeling of vindication never lasted long, he tended to find himself worked up all over again when Richie Tozier told him he walked his sunburnt ass back outside without a lick of sunscreen on—- _again._ _  
_   
“Bill called last night.” Mike ran his fingers through Mr. Chips short fur, and the dog nuzzled against his hand as he blissfully chewed his way through brown bark. “Said he’ll be here before the fourth.”   
  
“Took him long enough.”   
  
“Richie also called.” Mike continued patiently, and there was no way he missed the benign smile dropping off of Eddie’s face to make way for surprise. “This morning, before you woke up.”   
  
Eddie eyed him, waiting for the moment where he cracked a smile and told him he was joking— but no, Mike didn’t kid Eddie and he didn’t kid around about Richie either. He voiced his disbelief anyways. _“Richie_ called?” He waited for Mike to nod his affirmation before he sputtered out, _“Willingly?”_   
  
Wind rustled through the trees, and Mike leaned his head back to let the cool reprieve dry the sweat from his forehead. “Beverly flew in from Chicago last night, showed up in his bedroom before the sun could rise.” His palms dug into the dirt, and with his face angled towards the cloudless blue sky he seemed to glow. Eddie stretched a leg out, and let the sun shine across his skin. “He walked her back to Elfrida’s place, had to go halfway across the town to do it too. Stone cold sober.”   
  
The two sat in companionable silence as Eddie felt a weight lift off of his chest, one that he hadn’t even known he was harboring. But there was Richie Tozier in his mind’s eye, no longer stumbling around the sidewalks drunk as a skunk, Rather, he imagined Richie Tozier sitting in his living room watching Looney Tunes reruns— half asleep on the burgundy couch with a bag of ice pops tucked under his shirt to keep the summer heat out.   
  
_“What’s up Doc?”_ Richie loved to ask, over and over in the midst of their shared summers over the years. He would extend his limbs across the couch in every direction, his body pliant and his face just as expressive as ever. Polar opposite to Eddie, who would sit on the very edge of Richie’s couch with his hands folded on his lap. “You’re stiffer than a board, Eds. It’s a million degrees in here— at least act like you wanna be comfortable.”   
  
“I’m plenty comfortable.” Eddie would snap, though it fell flat time and time again.   
  
Richie would groan aloud, and throw his head back against the headrest in a show of dramatics. He nudged at Eddie’s side with the ratty toes of his Converse, and didn’t so much as flinch when Eddie swatted him away with a scowl. _“C’moooon_ Spaghetti Head, you’re makin’ me sweat just looking at you.” He paused. “Would it make you feel better if I let you sit on my lap?”   
  
Eddie stood. “I’m leaving.”   
  
Cackling, Richie would grab at his arm with lazy fingers to yank Eddie back down. His laughter would fall into a cadence that matched the sound of Porky Pig’s stuttering on the television, and Eddie would bite his lip to hide his own smile. “No no no, you can’t leave yet Eds. Can’t have you sulking around your own house watching Mrs. Kaspbrak’s programs because I drive you up a wall.” Every time, Eddie would glare daggers down at Richie— putting as much anger and heat behind his stare as he could— before he inevitably conceded with a sigh that they both knew was coming.   
  
_“Fine.”_ _  
_   
Even though Richie knew as well as Eddie did that he would sit back down, no less stiff than before, Richie would still break into the widest goofiest smile he had. Excitement and surprise glittering in his eyes like they were colors of their own, and in those moments— Eddie would think of his Sundays spent sitting next to Sonia Kaspbrak in Pilgrim Orthodox Presbyterian.   


6.

The summer of 1959 is when Eddie Kaspbrak began routinely slipping out of his bedroom window late in the evening, into the dense forest that loomed behind his house when the sun was only high enough to drench the sky purple. The woods in Derry were notoriously disorienting, and summer never _truly_ began until a kid in the neighborhood turned up missing after a stroll through the trees. But, Eddie’s internal compass never ceased to amaze and since _he_ hadn’t ever been one of those kids to turn up missing, he didn’t doubt his directional capabilities. There wasn’t a single place in the world that Eddie couldn’t find his way out of, at least, there wasn’t a single place in _Derry_ that he couldn’t find his way out of. As a 12 year old with an overbearing parent, Derry may as well have been the entire world to him.   
  
While not as self destructive as his addiction to a fraudulent aspirator, his brand new habit had also originated as a direct result of Sonia Kaspbrak. It started when he found his bike leaning against the front porch with a bar of metal twined through the front wheel, it was locked in place with a device no different than the ones sold at Freese’s Department Store. It was mid-afternoon by then, and the only reason he was outside staring at the wheel of his bike in dismay is because Bill Denbrough called.   
  
“Wh-whu-we haven’t s-suh-seen a lot of you th-this summer, E-Eh-Eddie.” Bill said over the phone fifteen minutes earlier. “We w-wanted to m-muh-make sure you w-were st-stuh-still coming t-to the B-Buh-Barrens.” 

“I’m coming Big Bill.” Eddie had reassured, he kept his voice down but he could hear the volume on the television being turned down. He could picture his mother standing before the knob, her face pinched as she listened to the one sided conversation. Quieter even, he added, “My Ma’s trying to keep me out of the sun, that’s all.”  
  
_Surely this isn’t meant for my bike,_ Eddie thought to himself, befuddled, and a tad hysterical. He leaned down and pulled at the lock, and shouldn’t have felt so shocked when it didn’t budge. Then, he remembered how his mother didn’t even try to stop when he brushed right by her and walked out their front door.   
  
“You don’t spend enough time with your mother.” Is the excuse Sonia gave him, her eyes watered with unshed crocodile tears. He clenched his trembling hands into tight balls and had to resist the urge to cry _himself._ That bike was his way of escape, his freedom. How dare she lock up his bike and, in turn, lock up _him—_ and have the gall to look him in his eyes and tell him it’s because _she misses him._ _  
_   
Furious, is what he was, but he couldn’t do anything aside from jerking his head up and down in his poorest imitation of a conceding nod and he trudged right back to his bedroom. A room just short of having padded walls, and a boarded window.   
  
The more time he spent gallivanting around town with his friends, the more his own bedroom began to feel like a glorified prison. The more his own mother began to feel like his jailer. It shouldn’t have surprised him, that she figured this out all on her own. And was now going to great lengths to keep him reliant on her. She was observant when she wanted to be. _Manipulative,_ when she wanted to be.   
  
That was the night he first crawled out of a tiny gap in his bedroom window, with his Ma snoring on the couch while the white noise of the static buzzing on the television set drowned out the sound of him opening and closing the window.   
  
More often than not, there was at least one Loser still loitering around the Barrens. Hidden in the underground clubhouse that Ben Hanscom instructed them through constructing in the summer of 1958. But on that very first night, it was Richie Tozier that he found in the den, _alone._ Ever since the smoke hole, the seven of them had implemented a _rule._ No smoking underground until the lingering smoky scent that remained after their smoke hole attempt cleared out. That was why the cigarette that hung loosely between Richie’s teeth was unlit. At his feet was a stack of _Little Lulu_ comics, almost as if he expected someone else to show.   
  
_Eddie in particular,_ who had outgrown those comic books years ago, but who was the only person that would still read them with Richie.   
  
But, he had startled at the sound of the trap door opening.   
  
_“Criiiiikey!”_ Richie whistled, he pushed his frames up with the edge of the book he was reading. “Scared the _shit_ outta me, didn’tcha? Heart’s justa jackrabbitin loike a boomer’s feet. _Howzit goin’ Eddie Spaghetti?”_ _  
_   
The Australian voice was new, and it wasn’t any better than his plethora of other voices. “To shit, Trashmouth.” He answered, and jumped into the clubhouse. The door dropped above him and slammed to the ground, Richie didn’t wince that time. Just stared up at Eddie with a searching, if not excited, smile. There was a lantern on the floor, Mike’s probably, and it illuminated the tiny room with a soft yellow glow. Behind Richie was his radio, it buzzed erratically through the ending notes of a Johnny Burnette tune.   
  
“That so?” Richie was grinning behind his cigarette, the filter jumped up and down underneath his buck teeth. With a jerk of his thumb, he gestured towards the stack of comic books. “Wanna help me tear through some of these?”   
  
“Wouldn’t it be better if we _read_ them?” Eddie blinked, he sat down next to Richie. “Instead of _tearing_ them?”   
  
It was one of those rare occasions that he managed to render Richie Tozier speechless, if only for a moment. The bespectacled boy stared back at him in blank confusion, with his mouth agape. It only took him seconds to realize that Eddie wasn’t serious, and when he did the guffawing started. Sometimes, when Eddie told his version of a joke, Richie would fall to pieces like it was just about the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Eddie always liked it a lot, when Richie did that. A guy like Richie Tozier would know when something was funny, he guessed.   
  
He didn’t actually do very much reading. He looked over Richie’s shoulder to stare at the pages, and he laughed when Richie laughed but he wasn’t paying attention. He listened to the radio croon quietly behind them and knocked knees with the hyperactive boy next to him, instead. It might have been boring to anyone else, but to Eddie Kaspbrak— anything was better than staring up at the beige ceiling in his _safe_ bedroom and listening to his mother snore from just outside the door. That was the start of the routine, and if his Ma noticed him sneaking out of the house when the sun set, it was never mentioned.   
  
In the summer of 1968, the night of the day that Beverly Marsh got back in town— he left a note on Mike Hanlon’s dresser in case the man woke up, and drove away from the farm in a thin coat that he really didn’t need.   
  
Fresh air, that was the excuse he gave himself, but he didn’t need to _drive_ anywhere for that. The freshest air in town was right there on the Hanlon farm, and after a few minutes driving he couldn’t pretend he didn’t know where he was headed. And after he had parked his car in front of Sonia Kaspbrak’s old house _(still with a for sale sign in the front yard)_ and trekked the familiar route through the woods towards the underground clubhouse, he couldn’t convince himself into believing that he was just taking a walk. But certainly, he hadn’t expected Richie Tozier would have beat him there.   
  
But then again, what did he think he was doing skulking around the Barrens after sundown anyways? He wasn’t a petulant child running away from the underside of his mother’s ruling thumb, _he was a grown man._ On some subconscious level, he must have known he would find Richie down in the old clubhouse with his radio and a box of cigarettes in his lap.   
  
Same as always.   
  
Like nothing had changed at all, he was in the middle of the Barrens holding open the trap door and watching Richie puff on his cigarette. Without the presence of a lantern it was the only source of light in the den, and Eddie wasn’t any happier about that than he was seeing Richie smoking on a lit cigarette. Even if the smell of smoke had cleared years ago. The radio was playing at it’s lowest volume, and from where Eddie was standing he couldn’t hear what was playing. He should have known, really, that he would find Richie in here. The leaves that obscured the clubhouse from watchful eyes were lazily scattered on top of the door, and Richie _had_ always been incredibly careless when it came to keeping their secret clubhouse a _secret._ _  
_   
He didn’t startle this time around when Eddie flung the door open _(though, Eddie couldn’t say the same for himself.)_ He just kept smoking on his Winston, and he smiled up at Eddie like he was happy to see him, like nothing had changed. “Boy am I glad to see you.”

 

7.

 _“What are you doing here?”_ The leaves on the pine trees surrounding the woodland clearing rustled in the wind, and Eddie was thankful he grabbed his jacket. The moon cast a silver light into the clubhouse that Eddie was still standing over, it was faint but it brightened the underground cubby better than the orange tip of Richie’s cigarette.  
  
“Could ask you the same thing.” Richie shot back with a bawdy wink. He sounded different— Eddie realized, _better._ It wasn’t quite the word Eddie was looking for but it was the one he kept.  
  
Eddie paused, apprehensive. The door he was holding open creaked between his fingertips against another strong gust of wind. “I asked you first.”  
  
“Smoking.” Richie answered easy, and a cascade of smoke filtered from between his lips into the cool night air. The barely there light from the moon became obscured by a black storm cloud, and when Eddie glanced towards the sky— dread clawed at his chest. His lungs tightened, and he felt desperately stupid for leaving his aspirator at Mike Hanlon’s home. His silence must have stretched out for longer than he realized, either that or Richie saw the storm clouds too, because he huffed impatiently and stood. One of his hands, the one not fiddling with his diminishing cigarette, held itself outwards for Eddie to grab ahold of. If anything, that awaiting palm made Eddie’s breathing all the more thin. “Humor me.”  
  
_He was sober._ That was what was different in his voice, he wasn’t slurring— for one. Slowly, like he expected Richie to bite him, he slid his palm against Richie’s. It was warm, calloused from falling down on the wooden planks in bars and mowing lawns for chump change. He imagined it, probably, the jolt in Richie’s thumb when Eddie’s pinky finger brushed against it. He must have, because Richie was smiling up at him again.  
  
Eddie jumped, and his feet slammed against the hardwood boards just as the door he was no longer holding upwards shut with a bang over their heads. It smelled like dirt, and cigarette smoke inside of the little box tucked into the ground. And it was nearly impossible to see anything that wasn’t the fading cigarette bud, as he suspected would be the case. Accusingly, he looked up in the general direction of Richie’s face. “How long were you sitting by yourself in the dark?”  
  
In the shroud of darkness, Eddie could make out the playful bewilderment on Richie’s face. “Christ alive Eds, you make it sound like I’m up to no good.” He could hear the barely there sound of Richie shrugging his shoulders. “‘Sides, my eyes were adjusted just fine ‘til you came barging in here.”  
  
Eddie glowered. “You’re unbelievable.”  
  
“Ain’t you sweeter than pie?” Richie crooned, and the warm presence of his body hovering over Eddie’s disappeared when he plopped his ass on the ground. His eyes _were_ adjusting quickly, enough so that he could make out Richie on the ground, staring up at him expectantly. He sat down. The boards were gritty with dirt, and he kept his hands clasped together in his lap. The radio was still quiet, but up close it was obvious that Jumpin’ Jack Flash is what was playing. Richie hummed along. “What brings ya ‘round these parts, mister?” Richie asked again, and his horn rimmed glasses caught on a flash of moonlight that seeped in between a crack in the boards.  
  
“Someone has to keep you out of trouble.” Never mind that Richie didn’t seem like he was in need of any help.   
  
“Aww... I jus’ think you missed me.” Richie cooed, and he blew a lungful of cigarette smoke into Eddie’s thin face. Eddie made a show of gagging, much to Richie’s amusement. “Ain’t that right, Eds?”  
  
The wind howled overhead in one last warning, before the boards overhead began to intercept the gentle patter of rain. It was pitch black now, with not even the stars providing slivers of silver light. Richie stubbed out his cigarette against the grimy boards they sat together on, and then the orange ash was gone.   
  
“Like a rock in my shoe.” Eddie grumped, and he could hear Richie snickering in the dark.  
  
“You’re hoarding all the good chucks in that noggin’ of yours, aren’tcha?” Leaning forward, Richie grabbed a handful of Eddie’s neat hair to ruffle out of place for the second time in twenty four hours. This time, Eddie didn’t hesitate when he shoved Richie’s arm away.  
  
_“Knock it off!_ Huh?”  
  
“Come on, you wanted to see me didn’t you?” Richie coerced, and he was leaning ever closer now. Eddie could smell the tobacco on his breath, and it was almost a relieving smell after growing accustomed to the scent of whiskey on Richie. “You were hoping you would run into me, right?”  
  
“I drove out here on a midnight whim.” Eddie snapped, defensive. _He hated feeling caught._ After all, it had been Richie he was thinking about, hadn’t it? When he left that note next to Mike’s bed, warning him that _he might not be back for a while._ And who does that? Who drives halfway across the town for a walk hoping to run into a relic of their past? When had _Eddie Kaspbrak_ ever done anything on a whim? There were times, and most of them included Richie. “You were the _last_ person I had on my mind.”  
  
Richie hummed, noncommittally. _Like he wasn’t convinced._ And _hell,_ why should he be? After all of these years, how could he not know when Eddie was lying to his face? “Can I tell you something?” His voice was quiet, and his nose brushed against Eddie’s in the dark. The sound of his heart, slamming against his ribcage drowned out the boom of thunder. Richie’s fingers grasped the front of Eddie’s shirt, and he moved until his lips were brushing against Eddie’s earlobe. He heard a gasping breath, and it took Eddie a moment to realize it was his own. “I was _really_ hoping I’d run into _you.”_   
  
Eddie shuddered, hard. The whispered words touching his lobe brought gooseflesh to the back of his neck, and when his mind was no longer reeling, he shoved Richie back by his shoulders and scrambled backwards. _Can’t do that. Can’t, I can’t._ _  
_  
Richie cackled, in that teasing _harmless_ Richie Tozier way but Eddie... Eddie was trembling. _It’s that leper. It’s that leper come back to get me but now it’s_ Richie _, because it knew. It always knew how I felt—_ _  
_  
“You asshole.” Eddie’s eyes were clenched shut, his breath was coming out in whistles. _Thin,_ his airways felt so thin. All Richie Tozier did was touch him and he was wheezing, wheezing like he was a goddamned child. He could barely hear over the sound of his body rebelling on him, but he was sure he heard Richie’s laughter tapering in off.  
  
“Eds?” Richie was kneeling in front of him now, so audibly worried. His hands were holding Eddie’s shoulders and, _shit, that just wasn’t helping at all was it?_ “Eds, where’s your inhaler?”  
  
“Don’t have it.” He managed to choke out, and it was hard to tell in the dark— but there could have been black spots dancing before his eyes.  
  
“Fuck.” Richie gritted out, and the heat from his body was moving away from Eddie. In his panicked state, he wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or hurt. If his mind wasn’t spinning, he would have asked what the hell Richie was doing? He may have heard the rustling of Richie fumbling for the pockets of his jeans over the sound of his asthma attack. What he could hear, was Richie mumbling to himself as he worked to rifle through his own pants pockets. _“Always take shit too far. Always. Now look what you’ve fucking done, gone and killed Eddie Spaghetti.”_   
  
“Not... helping, Rich.” Eddie wheezed. Before he could pass out in the dark as pitch cubby that was surrounded by the dense forest of Derry and the rain that was now beating down on it, the familiar press of an aspirator tucked itself between his slack lips. The dispenser was pushed down, likely by Richie’s finger, and a foul tasting burst of fresh air opened his airways. It wasn’t real, he knew it wasn’t real—- but damn it, _he could breathe._ His knees were tucked against his chest, and the room spun in dizzying circles while he regained his bearings. It must have taken several minutes, and in that time, Richie had grown suspiciously quiet. Eddie reached forward into the dark to press his palm against Richie’s chest, to make sure he wasn’t breathing all by himself. “Where’d you get that?”  
  
Dumbfounded, Richie looked between the aspirator still cradled in his palm and the hand that rested on his chest. His heartbeat was quick beneath Eddie’s palm, and if it wasn’t so grounding, Eddie would have snatched his hand away. “Found it in my room, earlier this week.” He finally said, and the worry that had been in his voice just moments earlier had faded. “Meant to give it back to you but...” He trailed off, and Eddie’s eyebrows shot up questioningly. He laughed, and thrust the inhaler forward to press it against Eddie’s chest. “‘Ere ‘tis Kaspbrak. Happiest of trails to ya.”  
  
Eddie blinked, and wrapped both of his hands around the old inhaler. Searchingly, he glanced up at the barely visible leer that Richie was focusing on him. He was relieved, that his... his _episode_ had been in a place so dark Richie could hardly see him. “Did Officer Nell ever once say ‘happy trails?’”  
  
Richie full on grinned, and his wonky teeth brightened the room. “Sure he did, just cuz he’s Irish doesn’t mean he ain’t ever heard of Roy Rogers.”   
  
He felt guilty, then, for mistaking Richie for his worst nightmare.  
  
“I was hoping I’d run into you, you know.” Richie mumbled, and Eddie had to make a conscious effort not to wheeze. “Couldn’t say it without being an asshole, I guess.”  
  
”You’re right.” Eddie mumbled back, and Richie jumped like he wasn’t expecting Eddie to say anything at all. He smiled, softly, up at Richie. “You _are_ an asshole, and I _did_ miss you.”   
  
The air between them was thick and stifling, a symptom of the lightning crackling through the sky if Eddie were to guess. In the silence, he squinted at the inhaler in his hand. He couldn’t remember ever leaving his aspirator at Richie’s house, even on accident. He hated visiting Mr. Keene to get a refill, and that’s why he tended to keep up with all of them. He turned it over, and that’s when he noticed it. Mud and blood smeared across the blue plastic— his breath caught. A memory, an old memory of him rearing back and throwing this inhaler at... at... It sunk into the mud, he remembered that, and he remembered grabbing ahold of Richie Tozier’s filthy arm and dragging him through the woods that he knew better than the back of his hand.  
  
“Where did you get this?” He whispered again, and Richie seemingly sensed his change in mood. The crease between his brows deepened.  
  
“In my room.” Richie repeated slowly, but he wasn’t looking at the blood on the aspirator he was looking at _Eddie._ He was staring down worriedly at searching Eddie’s face to find where he went wrong.  
  
_“This sank.”_ Eddie enunciated with certainty. He saw it, damn it. He saw it sink like a rock in the mud and how could it have turned up in Richie’s bedroom? “I threw it at _it.”_ _  
_  
Richie froze.  
  
He had his eyes on the inhaler now, and his face was a pallid white sheet. “I...” He was thinking, _hard._ Replaying his memories back so quickly that his eyes were moving back and forth like he was watching them play out in real time. Eddie worried that he would be sick. “I must have gone back to get it for you, right?”   
  
“Are you sure?” He whispered into the air between them, that was charged with fear. Richie made eye contact with him, imploring and frightened. That was answer enough.  
  
“Hey Eds,” He started, and he yanked the aspirator out of Eddie’s trembling hand. He clenched his palm around it so fiercely that his knuckles turned white, and his fingernails left red welts into his pale skin. “You don’t mind if I toss this into the Canal, do ya?”  
  
Numbly, Eddie shook his head no.  
  
“Good.”  
  
Richie stood, and in one swift motion he flung open the roof that acted as a door into their clubhouse. Rain poured into the bunker, and Eddie knew their clothes would be soaked in seconds. In a mirrored move of how Eddie threw his aspirator at _(the werewolf, his mind provided grimly)_ it, Richie tossed the nasty piece of plastic as far as he could. It landed in the stream that led into the Kenduskeag, and they _shouldn’t_ ever see it again. He was breathing heavy when he stared down at Eddie, and the moon parted from behind the clouds to illuminate the determination and fear on Richie’s rain soaked face.  
  
“Let’s get the hell out of here, Eddie, my love.” He huffed through the rain water that dripped off of his nose and down his lips. “Think I’ve still got a few comic books we haven’t torn through back at Casa del Tozier.”  
  
Richie held out his hand, and like they were being chased all over again— _they ran._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is slow paced but it’s important for building the next few chapters. anyone else incredibly excited for it 2? anyone else heard the reddie spoilers?


	5. house on haunted hill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING for very mild homophobic language, a homophobic hate crime (the hate itself is not extremely explicit, but the violence and the aftermath of the violence is written fairly explicitly) and in general, the internalized homophobia that you would expect from gay men who grew up surrounded by homophobia in the 40s through the 60s.
> 
> it is skippable, my parts are numbered and the part that contains this is underneath part “4.” In no way am I writing this to minimize or romanticize homophobia, what i’ve written here i feel is important to richie’s development as a character and his development towards caring about himself. his own internalized homophobia strongly mirrors my own, because i do feel writing is best done when it takes inspiration from real life experiences that the writer can relate to.
> 
> in regards to how you should read richie’s sexuality, you can read it however you like. i see this version of him as gay, personally, but he can be read as bisexual/pansexual if that’s the headcanon you prefer.

_“I know of a fool,_ _you see;_

_for that fool is me.”_

_(The Teenagers)_

 

1.

Nightmares were a rarity for Wentworth Tozier, the last time he could remember having a vivid restless sleep was when he was a boy. When his father decided he was old enough to tear through the flesh of the gurgling half alive animals that the man would haul into their home in Northern Maine with his hunting rifle slung across his shoulders. He was nine years old. His nightmares, back then, were filled with deers that talked him through their gutting in Charles Tozier’s voice— _“Slice me right open from the chest to the pelvis, and while you’re at it, boy, grab me a beer from the ice box.”_ _  
_  
They were usually dead by the time his father brought them back and that was always blissful, in comparison to the times that Wentworth had to watch the animal’s heart stop pumping blood. He dropped his knife and puked onto his brand new shoes first time he saw it happen. Charles tanned his hide real good for it, but it at least made his old man more hesitant to bring back something that hadn’t already died.  
  
They were ridiculous, childish things— _nightmares._ And they only stopped after his father grabbed him by the ear and slipped a half empty bottle of lager into his mouth, _“Stop fuckin’ crying.”_ He slurred in his thick drawl. _“It’s already dead, damn you. Grow some hair on your chest.”_  
  
That was when Wentworth decided; real life was scarier than nightmares and grown ups were scarier than monsters.   
  
For maybe the first time in a decade _(and he was getting old, if he was measuring time by decades now)_ he awoke before the sun did, covered in cold sweat and plagued with memories of the bloody maw and wet mud slippery paws that occupied his grim dreams. He was gasping, he realized, gasping like he had gone for a run. He closed his eyes and waited for the erratic pounding of his heart to calm. _A nightmare,_ Wentworth mused cynically— he felt like a helpless child as he just barely stopped himself from reaching out and waking up his wife, _and a nightmare about one of those silly movie monsters that used to terrify Richie, at that._ _  
_  
Absurd as it was, Wentworth knew he wouldn’t be getting anymore sleep. He didn’t feel tired, anyways. He felt _scared_ and he felt like he needed a smoke, and a cup of coffee.   
  
Margaret had never been one to wake easy, but he pressed his palm flat against his mouth to stifle the sound of his yawning. Despite the fact that he was something of an early bird, his wife would grow suspicious if she knew he had woken so early on a day that he didn’t have to make it to the office. He pressed a kiss to her forehead before climbing out of bed, anyhow.   
  
The boarded floor in the hallway was a cold shock to the soles of his feet when he trudged from his carpeted bedroom, and the grogginess he had felt began to ebb.   
  
Wentworth Tozier had never been a paranoid man. Not like Charles Tozier had been. He was too goddamned smart to let one nightmare turn him paranoid but— _but._ The hallway was quiet, empty and looked no different than it did every other morning. Except, it was maybe a little bit darker than usual. There was something different though, and Wentworth just didn’t think he could have his morning cup of joe until he figured out what it was.   
  
And, he had been raised observant. Loathe as he was to admit it.   
  
He glanced at Richie’s bedroom door, it was shut tight but _that_ wasn’t anything to look twice at. Privacy was an important virtue in the Tozier household.   
  
Irritably, he realized that his paranoia wouldn’t be staved until he checked and made sure Richie wasn’t _(sliced open,_ the werewolf from his nightmare reminded in his lulling voice, _ripped apart like those innocent little animals your Daddy made you bleed out)_ gone again. Quietly, because Richie slept lighter than his mother, he turned the knob to open his son’s bedroom door. His initial thought was that he wasn’t quite sure _what_ he was seeing that was different. Only that he was right, there was something different, and as expected; he’s _not_ a paranoid.   
  
But then he looked harder, and felt ashamed for being on edge like a spooked child.   
  
On top of Richie’s bed, his son lay sprawled out on the sheets with his glasses on the floor next to his bed. He was sleeping soundly, _drooling even,_ and that was surely a trait he had picked up from his mother. But next to him, underneath the covers was the tell tale lump of another person— sleeping just as sound as Richie. The only thing he could see of them was a dark tuft of hair, which meant that it regrettably wasn’t Beverly Marsh. Who Wentworth had taken quite a liking to over the past few years, and wondered if she and his son had ever been more than friends.   
  
_No,_ he supposed he knew it wouldn’t be her. And he knew that really, he didn’t want to stare for any longer to figure out who it really was sharing a bed with his son. He wasn’t Charles Tozier, after all. Embarrassed that he had intruded on his son, Wentworth closed the door with a quiet click.   
  
It was too early to be awake, and he didn’t have anywhere to be, but he put his coffee on to brew and grabbed his pack of Winston’s and his box of matches alongside it— and he walked outside. By the time the sun rose, the dream was as distant as the dead deer from his childhood. Gray eyed and lolling tongued and teeth that were as yellow  as his father’s.

 

2.

He was thirsty. _Goddammit was he thirsty._ When he swallowed, the foul taste of morning breath sat heavy on his tongue, and his throat convulsed with dehydration. He needed water, probably. But the ache in his throat was second only to that _constant ache_ of Richie Tozier’s. _He needed a drink._ Although it wouldn’t soothe his flaming throat, it would damn sure soothe _him._ But—  
  
 _(But what? Why couldn’t he have a drink?)_ _  
_  
There was something, _someone,_ warm and breathing beneath the flat of his palm. He groped at the warmth and his fingers wrapped around the soft cotton of a tee shirt well worn. A quiet huff of exasperated laughter touched the skin of his cheek.  
  
 _(Tammy?)_ _  
_  
“If you want your shirt back, all you had to do was ask me for it.” _Eddie._ The dulcet tone of Eddie’s voice after just waking had Richie feeling warm to his core, he decided not to linger on how relieved he was that it was Eddie Kaspbrak with him— rather than Tammy Davis. He could hate himself later for the instinctual relief, he was more comfortable than he had been in a while. The desperate desire for liquor was forgotten, and that was nothing short of a miracle these days.  
  
The midmorning sun peeked between the cracks in the shut blinds, and through his closed lids Richie could feel the yellow light straining to brighten his bedroom. His pillow was damp with sweat, and his unruly hair was matted against his sticky forehead.  
  
He could have had a nightmare, he had no memory of it but it wouldn’t be anything _new—_ night terrors were to Derry what Marlboro was to London, after all.   
  
He felt the hesitant graze of Eddie’s thumb against the skin of his clenched knuckles, and maybe _this_ was a dream. Maybe the tentative touch was another of those things that his mind conjured up to get rid of the full body ache that demanded he get a drink. Eddie Kaspbrak, unintentional as it was, had always been his favorite distraction from the worst things in life. He swallowed his guilt and his shame, and he turned his hand over to let Eddie play with his open palm.  
  
“Is this how late you usually sleep in?” Eddie sounded amused, his breath still fanned across Richie’s face and Richie wondered if Eddie noticed just how breathless he was. God he hoped not. “Guess that solves the mystery of why you weren’t answering the phone when Stan called.”  
  
Despite himself, Richie grinned. “Are you usually this talkative with the men you take to bed? Or am I an exception?”  
  
The hand resting beneath Eddie’s was shoved away with more force than was realistically necessary. “You’re the shittiest person I know, Richie.”  
  
The _“takes one to know one,”_ was on the tip of his tongue. And he would have said it, if not for the selfish urge to hold onto and bask in the warmth for as long as he could. _(All you do is take.)_ He just smelled like soap, and minty toothpaste but he was _Richie’s._ He wouldn’t be Richie’s forever but for this morning, while Richie was too sleepy to stop himself he would be greedy and press his nose to the top of Eddie’s head. He would breathe in the flowery shampoo that he had used for as long as they had known one another and he would—  
  
Richie sat up. He was awake for the long haul, and he needed a drink.  
  
His horn rimmed glasses were on the floor, Eddie tossed them onto the hardwood if Richie was remembering the night before correctly. The memory of clambering out of his bedroom window with his radio tucked underneath his arm, and walking to the old clubhouse feeling more sober than he ever wanted to emerged in the forefront of his mind. Quick to follow was the image of Eddie hoisting himself into that same window, and turning with his arms outstretched to help Richie follow him inside.  
  
Eddie, whose shorts were streaked with dirt from sitting in their poorly maintained Barrens hideout, had stared up at him nervously as soon as Richie shut the window behind him. His frail fingers twined and untwined in front of his body, and his brown eyes were impossibly wide. Richie could see his own haggard face reflected in the depths of them. “Would your parents mind if I slept on the couch?”  
  
“Yes.” Richie answered, and he couldn’t stop himself from laughing aloud when Eddie winced at his sharp reply. “C’mon Spaghetti Man, don’t tell me you forgot about all’a those sleepovers we used to have.”  
  
“No I remember.” He stared at Richie’s awaiting bed disdainfully. “You liked to cuddle.”  
  
There must have been something on Richie’s face that changed Eddie’s mind— the anxiety lurking in his calf eyes was replaced by determined resolve. “I’m not filthying up your sheets with these clothes.”  
  
“You know I’m never opposed to you filthying up my sheets, Eds.” And that’s when Richie noticed the minute tremble that wracked through Eddie’s thin frame, and the way he closed his eyes like the sound of Richie’s voice pained him. Richie remembered Eddie telling him about the leper. He remembered terrified, frantic tears on Eddie’s _(who was so young, too young to have heard those horrid things)_ cheeks when he repeated the words that monster threw at him. He hated it then, that this floodgate of memories was opened when he pressed that mud covered inhaler into Eddie’s mouth. He smiled, hoping that Eddie could look him in the eyes and know it was _just Richie._ And Richie just wanted to make him smile. “If you wanted to sleep naked in my bed, all you hadta do is ask.”  
  
”You make everything so damned difficult.” Eddie grumbled, but because Richie’s jokes had never failed to get Eddie out of his own head— he smiled back.   
  
Eddie knew where Richie kept everything, and he sifted through his dresser drawers like they were his own. The shirt he picked was one that Richie had worn so often in his teenage years that there were the fabric near the collar was stretched thin. He thought it was like Eddie, to grab a shirt that he wouldn’t expect Richie to grab himself, until he saw the nostalgic smile that Eddie ducked his head to hide as he stared at the faded design on the front. An old Red Sox shirt, one that used to belong to his old man before he commandeered ownership of the tee. Wentworth hated baseball, and Richie _was_ his father’s son.  
  
But Eddie, he _loved_ baseball. Eddie loved The New York Yankees, in particular, and _hated_ the Red Sox. He wore the damn shirt just see Eddie scowl when they would meet in front of the Aladdin to watch a double feature _(on Richie, of course.)_ “You wear that thing just to annoy me.” Eddie would say, and Richie would lie through his teeth about how vast his baseball knowledge was. And talk out of his ass about how shitty the Yankees were, until Eddie was red in the face and spilling popcorn everywhere as he yelled about what a real _nutjob_ Richie was. They always got booted from the Aladdin before the second flick played.  
  
That nostalgic little smile dropped from Eddie’s face the moment he saw Richie staring and he looked up at him, baffled. “I can’t believe you still have this thing.”  
  
It was the shirt he was wearing when they woke up together in Richie’s bed, and that thought alone made Richie’s throat constrict all over again. Eddie looked over Richie’s shoulder, and sighed when caught a glimpse of his filthy clothes scattered across the floor. His Keds were coated with muck and leaves from their midnight jog in the rain, and he stared at them mournfully.  
  
 _What an eyeful,_ Richie thought as he followed the trail of clothes until his eyes landed on Eddie, _wonder what that old leper would think this looked like._ His stomach turned, _don’t ruin it, Trashmouth._ _  
_  
“We’re not talking about last night, are we?”  
  
Richie slung his legs over the side of the bed, he let them smack against the hardwood with a heavy thud. He grabbed his glasses off of the floor, and as wobbly and crooked as they were on the end of his nose, sight was always a welcomed relief. He turned his head to see Eddie staring at him, grimly. _Pale._ “That depends, my love.”  
  
Almost as if he were afraid Richie would say that, he broke their eye contact. “The aspirator—“  
  
“No, we aren’t talking about last night.” His voice came out harder than he intended for it to, and Eddie flinched. He looked away then, too drowsy and pliant to Eddie’s surprised doe eyes to keep staring into them.  
  
Quietly, he said, “We should at least tell Bill.”  
  
“Why?” Richie asked, harsh. “To spook him into redeveloping that goddamned stutter he worked so hard to get rid of? To remind him that the thing that killed his kid brother is probably still lurking underneath Derry? Shit Eddie, for all we know that aspirator was hiding in my room for years. That I found it here after that blamed werewolf chased us out of the Barrens and just didn’t want to tell you, and scare you into needing to us the fucking inhaler all over again.”  
  
He heard the shaky exhale that was Eddie’s way of attempting to keep himself composed. It usually never worked. “Do you honestly expect me to believe, after all of these years, that _Richie Tozier_ can keep things to himself? Keep secrets?”  
  
“It wouldn’t be the first fucking time.” He was cold, and he needed a drink. But he would settle for a smoke.  
  
He chanced a glance over his shoulder at Eddie, and the sympathy on his face was worse than if anger had been in it’s place. Richie wondered if he accidentally said he needed a drink out loud. “We made a promise.” Richie stood, and began to fumble through his pants pockets for his box of Winston’s. Eddie was still sitting on his bed, and now his fucking sheets were going to _smell_ like Eddie. And he was still wearing that _goddamned tee shirt,_ and looking up at Richie with pleading eyes. He, not for the first time, felt like the world’s biggest asshole. “The least we can do—“  
  
“You remember that promise differently than I do.” There was a cigarette, his last cigarette, between his teeth. The jagged white scars on his palms cradled the lighter as he held it in front of his face and flicked it once, twice before it caught. The end of his Winston lit with a dull orange glow, and that first morning drag was always the best. “Look, if we find another artifact of Christmas past that is where it shouldn’t be, we can tell Big Bill. You dig?”  
  
Eddie climbed out of Richie’s bed, and he stood like he was trying to appear less small with his chin tilted up and his fists clenched by his sides but his shirt _(Richie’s shirt)_ hung loosely on his shoulders and he had to stare several inches up to meet Richie’s eyes. “You’re a _coward,_ Richie Tozier?” _That’s not news to me, my dear._ “And I’m leaving.”   
  
_In my clothes?_ Richie wanted to ask.  
  
His shoulder bumped Richie’s as he brushed past him, and Richie tried to stop him with a fleeting touch against his wrist. “Eds—“  
  
 _“Don’t_ call me that.” Eddie whipped around to glare at him hotly, he yanked his wrist away from Richie’s touch. “How many times have I told you not to call me that?”  
  
“What would you prefer then, huh?” And Richie’s teeth were grinding now, his head was aching. Worse than his fucking throat. “Because I can think of a colorful few that I’m just dying to call you right now.”  
  
The corner of Eddie’s mouth twitched downwards, and as much as he tried to school away the betrayal on his face— Richie could still see it lingering in his wavering pupils. _World’s biggest asshole, ladies and gentleman._ “Wait—“ He started, but Eddie spun on his heel and effectively ended the conversation. The door swung open, and if Richie hadn’t been really looking, he wouldn’t have noticed that Eddie’s hand never turned on the knob. Surprised, Eddie stumbled backwards into Richie. In the threshold, stood Wentworth Tozier. With his hand on the door’s knob and his mouth open in quiet shock.  
  
The man stared at Eddie, looked down at the Red Sox shirt that Richie _knew_ he recognized and then let his eyes fall to the ground where Eddie’s clothes from the night before still laid. Richie paled. It only took seconds, before Wentworth composed himself and reverted back to his mask of indifference. _It’s not like that,_ Richie wanted to say, and he wouldn’t be _lying—_ not really. _Because it’s not like that_ for Eddie.  
  
“Are you two planning on joining us for breakfast, or am I going to have to help Mags dump your plates in the can?” Wentworth was smiling, good natured. And if he had seemed visibly uncomfortable initially, there was no trace of that embarrassment on his face now.  
  
Eddie, awkward, with his ears bright red and his mouth floundering around unintelligibly— shrunk away from Wentworth. He was scared, Richie realized. He had seen Eddie look at Sonia the exact same way, and he resented his Dad _(albeit, pointlessly)_ for startling the fiery lividity out of Eddie. Even if that anger was pointed at Richie. “I’m sorry Mr. Tozier, but I’m—“  
  
“Going to be at the kitchen table in just a minute.” Richie interrupted, and he steadied one hand on Eddie’s shoulder before leaning forward and shutting the door in Went’s face. Better he face Eddie’s wrath now rather than later. He was proud of himself for not flinching in the face of Eddie’s haughty glare. “Don’t look at me like that, I’m sparing Maggie the heartache of dumping your breakfast in the trash.”  
  
To his credit, Eddie did look guilty at the prospect.  
  
It was silent, and Eddie’s face was still pink. The flush spread so far in disappeared beneath the torn collar of Richie’s shirt, and he hoped to God that Eddie hadn’t seen the suggestive look that his father had given them. “He would want us to tell him.” Eddie mumbled, quiet enough that Richie’s old man wouldn’t hear if he was still loitering on the other side of the door. He looked up at Richie, brown eyes sad. “You know he would.”  
  
“Eds,” Eddie frowned when Richie used the nickname, but didn’t reprimand him for it. Richie sighed, and ran one of his hands through Eddie’s short sleep mussed hair. He left his hand on the back of Eddie’s neck. “Not until we’re certain. We can’t ruin their summer unless we’re certain, and we’re not.”   
  
_(“I think you’re a loon, Richie Tozier.”_ Eddie had told Richie once, his nails bit his palms as he clenched his fists into balls. They were standing in the Barrens, his eyes were watering and he was covered in grey water. _“You’re going to get us all killed one day with you, did you know that?”)_ _  
_  
But he was eleven then, and he was twenty one now. He blinked up at Richie uncertainly, and then sighed. He shrugged off Richie’s hand with a grimace. “Fine,” He concurred, and his eyes fluttered shut. “I’m putting a lot of trust into your judgment with this, did you know that?”  
  
And Richie smiled. “‘Course you are, you’re smart as they come Spaghetti Head.”

 

3.

If it weren’t for the occasional sound of a fork scraping against cheap china, or Wentworth Tozier crinkling the pages of his newspaper as he read through the comics section of the Derry Herald, the kitchen table would be completely silent. Richie frowned down at his plate, his breakfast smiled back up at him with fried eggs for eyes and a bacon smirk. The last time he and his parents ate together as a family... _Christ,_ it had to have been years. Long before he left— back when Richie still valued that, back when Wentworth could afford to _make time._ It wasn’t something that he particularly missed, but it made him wonder why his parents were putting on this charade. If his father hadn’t looked so surprised to see Eddie Kaspbrak in his bedroom, he would have assumed that all of this was for him.

  
He snuck a glance at Eddie, and found himself watching earnestly as the asthmatic pushed his food around on his plate with his fork. _(That explained where the plate scraping was coming from, at least.)_ He was avoiding the bacon strips, Richie realized, and maybe living with Mike made his vegetarianism contagious. _Or Eddie just thought it was._ _  
_  
Eddie caught his eye, and blinked his confusion in the face of Richie’s staring. “You gonna eat that, Eds?”  
  
“Knock it off.” Eddie grumbled, and cast a hesitant glance at his plate before picking up a piece of bacon with all of the determination of a man being force fed a cockroach. He looked back up at Richie, and balked. “Stop staring.”  
  
“I’m not staring.” _I’m flirting._ “I’m watching.”  
  
Eddie dropped his piece of bacon onto his plate, and the breakfast smile was lopsided. He was glaring. “That’s the same thing, you know it’s the same— _damn it, Richie.”_  
  
He forked a bite of fried egg into his mouth with a vengeance. The uncomfortable silence shrouded the table once Eddie’s mouth was full, and Richie ceased his staring to take a glimpse at his parents. Both of whom were uncharacteristically  quiet for the two people who raised Trashmouth Tozier. He saw his father look over his morning paper to look between the two formerly squabbling boys, and minutes later, he saw his mother do the exact same thing. _“What?”_ Richie snapped, and his voice came out harsh enough to startle both of his parents.  
  
 _(Had it been that long? Did they forget he still had friends to invite over? Or are they surprised Eddie showed at all?)_ _  
_  
“Watch your tone, son.” Wentworth grumbled, he propped his newspaper to hide his face behind it. Richie glared in his direction, fruitless as it was. Cautiously, Maggie pressed her lips into a thin line and looked at Richie with the promise of apology already in her eyes.  
  
“We’re just surprised dear, that’s all.” Richie stared at his mother, baffled. She folded her hands neatly on the tabletop in front of her, and similarly to Richie, she shot a pleading look in Wentworth’s direction that he couldn’t see. “Your father, you know how he can be sometimes darling, he wanted to make sure you were still...”  
  
Maggie’s sentence trailed, and Richie wondered when she had started walking on eggshells around him. Right after he showed up on their doorstep looking for handouts after going radio silent for three years, he guessed. “He wanted to make sure I was still _here.”_ Richie finished, only just managing not to end his own sentence with, _‘Just because my coffee isn’t spiked this morning doesn’t mean I’m going to bite your head off. Christ, is treating me like you always have that much of a burden?’_  
  
But that would be unfair, and it would directly contradict his point.  
  
“He worries.” Maggie nodded, and steadfastly ignored Wentworth’s grunt. She looked nervous again, and she shifted her eyes from Richie to Eddie, so quickly that Richie doubted Eddie even noticed. In fact, it looked like Eddie was doing his best to stay _out_ of the conversation. “We both do, and we were relieved to see you found yourself... company.” One of her hands gestured towards Eddie, and she smiled reassuringly at the asthmatic when he caught her eyes. He smiled back, albeit confusedly, around the piece of bacon he was hesitantly nibbling on. “We were just surprised that the company you were keeping was that of a man.”  
  
Eddie choked on his dubious bite of bacon, and his coughing turned to pained wheezing very rapidly.  
  
 _“Goddammit.”_ Richie hissed. He ignored the terrified mantra that bounced around his brain _(they know, they know, they know)_ in favor of picking up a glass of water and holding it out for Eddie. He relaxed when Eddie sipped at the water slowly, closing his eyes when the hacking finally calmed. But he didn’t take his eyes off of Eddie, and his still beet red face, when he spoke to his parents. “What the fuck are you talking about?”  
  
From his peripheral, Richie could see the Derry Herald being folded, and then sat onto the tabletop. “Don’t use language like that Richie, you know your mother doesn’t like it.” _Does she like it that I like boys then? Is she proud? Would she prefer me talk about that? Would she prefer to hear me wax poetic about the way Eddie Kaspbrak looks when he’s worrying at his lip? What about my first crush? I’m sure Maggie would love to hear about how Stanley Uris was the first person I ever looked twice at._ “We just want you to be careful.” The man looked awkward, and Richie couldn’t remember if his father had ever given him the sex talk— but he couldn’t _imagine_ him being able to gruff his way through it now. “Derry isn’t the easiest place to live when you’re—”  
  
“When I’m _what?”_ Richie’s upper lip was curled into a nasty sneer, and God, he wanted that to _feel_ better than it did. He didn’t feel angry, he felt _sick._ Sick and scared. “When I’m taking men up to my bedroom to fuck them?”  
  
Eddie stood, his chair screeched against the kitchen tiles and his plate rattled on the table. He was pale, and he was only barely holding back his wheezing. Richie was intimately familiar with what it looked like when a person was going to be sick, and he worried that if Eddie stayed at the table any longer he would hurl all over their untouched breakfasts. “Thank you for breakfast, Mr. and Mrs. Tozier.” He spoke in a hushed voice, his breathing was thin and Richie hoped to God that the aspirator that liked to apparate from thin air would do just that. “My Ma—   _no.”_ He closed his eyes, and his face was dark red now. “Mike Hanlon will be worried if I don’t… I’ll see you later, Rich.”  
  
And he was beelining for the front door. _“Fuck.”_ Richie shot to his feet to chase after Eddie, and was stopped by his mother’s gentle touch on his wrist.  
  
“Richie,” She started, and her wide eyes were staring up at him helplessly. “We only want what’s best for you, darling. We weren’t trying to spook the both of you.” She paused, and Richie realized how watery her smile was. “You don’t have to be anything but yourself for us. You know that.”  
  
“It’s not like that with Eddie, Mom.” He had to look away from her when he said it. _One day, I’ll be able to thank her for all she’s done for me._ His hand was shaking in her grip.  
  
She dropped his wrist.  
  
Eddie hadn’t gone far. Richie hadn’t really expected him to, not with the way his breath was coming out in thin gasps. Alongside that, the keys to his Thunderbird were still up in Richie’s bedroom. Still in the pocket of his shorts that he left like poorly concealed evidence on the floor next to Richie’s bed. He knew what it looked like, and he was naïve to think that his parents wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. He caught Eddie on the porch, his eyes were squeezed shut and his jaw was clenched like it was the only thing holding him back from leaning over the railing and emptying his stomach. _We just want you to be careful. Derry isn’t the easiest place to live when you’re—_ _  
_  
“Why would they assume that?” Eddie questioned, hoarsely. As if he were a child all over again, he feared that someone of Henry Bowers likeness would see the two of them standing here outside of his house. And they would make the same assumptions that Richie’s parents had.  
  
 _(Had he always been this obvious?)_  
  
“You know how old folks in Derry are.” Richie laughed, tried to lighten the mood but it only seemed to further irritate Eddie’s pencil thin airways. “Nosy, assumptive. Don’t tell me you never came across an adult like that before, huh?”  
  
It was a mistake, Richie thought moments after speaking, to remind Eddie of Sonia Kaspbrak while he was in the midst of panicking. Eddie’s jaw tightened, and Richie winced. “Those _assumptions,”_ Eddie’s voice was acidic, and his eyes flew open. “Get people like us kill—”  
  
The words choked in his throat, and he grew impossibly paler. He fumbled around his borrowed clothes for his aspirator and gasped heavily when he came up short. Richie studied Eddie, frozen in thought as the words played back again and again in his mind and— “What do you mean people like us?” Richie’s voice was soft, soft as he could make it. He was scared, but Eddie was too. They had both been scared— for a long time. “Eddie, what do you mean by _people like us?”_   
  
“Not...” Eddie cringed as a wheezing gasp broke through his sentence, and he cradled his head in his hands. “Not _us.”_   
  
_Just me,_ is what he didn’t say.  
  
“Hey.” Richie reached his hand out to touch Eddie’s quivering shoulders, and he stopped with his hand hovering over the back of his shirt. _Richie’s shirt._ If someone saw... _but God, why should that matter?_ They would call Richie the same names they called him his entire life. He wrapped an arm around Eddie’s shoulders, and cradled the asthmatic close to his side. It wasn’t the playful roughhousing of their youth, when Richie would yank Eddie into his side to pinch his cheeks and pull his pigtails. “Stop huffing and puffing, Eddie Spaghetti. My folks, they aren’t like Henry Bowers. They aren’t like Mrs. K.”  
  
Eddie stiffened beneath his arm at the mention of his mother, and Richie squeezed his shoulders comfortingly. “They don’t mean no harm by it, okay? They wouldn’t...” He huffed out a sad breath, and closed his eyes. Tammy Davis was there behind his eyelids, her brown eyes sparkled with unshed tears. He always owed her his honesty. He owed that to Eddie too, he owed that to Eddie just as much. He opened his eyes. “They wouldn’t get _people like us_ hurt.”   
  
Fearful brown eyes stared up into his, and the blood rushing through Richie’s head made him feel woozy.  
  
“Richie...” Eddie mumbled, soft in a way he usually wasn’t with Richie. Hopeful. Richie wouldn’t _(he couldn’t)_ read into that look. Not the way he used to read into everything Eddie did when they were both dumb kids, and childishly hope that those lingering looks were filled with love rather than exasperation. Those looks of love had always been reserved for Bill, and Richie stopped himself from _hoping_ before they even turned twelve.  
  
“Get your ass inside, Eds.” He gestured towards the door with the tilt of his head, in way of an answer. Eddie’s gaze didn’t once falter from Richie’s face. “It’s way too fucking hot for you to be running away without your car keys.”  
  
He laughed, breathlessly but it wasn’t in lieu of what Richie said. His eyes were wide, and elated, and Richie ached when he realized that neither of them had ever expected _acceptance._ “Beep beep, Rich.” It was said on instinct, and it looked like the last thing Eddie wanted Richie to do was _stop talking._ There were drying tear treks streaking down his cheeks, and that familiar urge to wipe them away is what ultimately made Richie untangle himself from Eddie’s grasp.  
  
 _I’m not as brave as you are, my dear._ Richie kept that thought to himself, _I should have never left you in Derry._ _  
_  
 _(But Los Angeles wasn’t much better, now, was it Richie?)_

 

4.

He shouldn’t have been there in the first place. He should have gone straight back to his apartment after leaving the Laugh Factory like he had done everyday since scoring the damned gig. If he were smarter, if he had ever mastered the ability to _learn his lesson,_ he would have done just that. But it had been one hell of a week. _One hell of a month,_ if he was being honest with himself. For the better part of the last month, Richie Tozier had slept on the kitchen floor instead of in his and Tammy Davis’ shared bed. They weren’t talking, _again,_ and even knowing that eventually they would work through their temporary split didn’t make going home any easier.   
  
He was tipsy from downing stolen shots off of his coworkers, and he was high from the rush that hearing people laugh at his jokes gave him. He wasn’t thinking clearly, and this is what he and Tammy _did_ when they weren’t talking. Before he could even walk off stage, he knew he was hitching a ride to Santa Monica.   
  
He hated Santa Monica. He hated the clubs in Santa Monica, specifically. Of course, if you asked, he would tell you different. He wouldn’t tell you how much he hated music that pounded so hard your eardrums rang or how much he hated the flashing lights that reflected against the lenses of his glasses. He also, wasn’t all that fond of sneaking in through the exit door of the one bar in Santa Monica that he _wasn’t_ allowed in anymore. But—   
  
_(There was always a but.)_ _  
_  
“You again?” The bartender asked, he looked at Richie from across the countertop with a critical gaze. “You do know that I can get you thrown out of here.”  
  
“You won’t.” And Richie had been so certain, so self assured and _cocky._ Wasn’t _that_ the real problem? He grabbed a half empty bottle of cheap beer from off of the counter and took a swig, the bartender’s lip curled disgustedly. “Anyone here who can take over your shift?”   
  
He wished then, that he knew the man’s name. But, no. That wasn’t part of the arrangement, this wasn’t _supposed_ to mean anything to either of them. It was reprieve, _brief reprieve._ The man was cleaning a tumbler, his wedding ring flashed dauntingly as the red lights of the club danced over their heads. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait, funnyman.”   
  
He didn’t wait long.   
  
The one stall in the men’s bathroom was disgusting, the floor was sticky with residual piss and vomit and it _smelled_ worse than it looked. There were belly up cockroaches littered across the floor, and the stall was covered wall to wall with the childish depictions of erotica that could only come from drunken men. Richie knew the place inside and out, which is how he effortlessly backed up the bartender into the cleanest portion of the wall and stuck his tongue down the other man’s throat. The way their mouths moved resembled biting more than it did kissing, but they were moaning into each other’s mouths and it was hot and wet and Richie just _took took took._  
  
 _(And when Tammy would later accuse him of only being good for_ taking, _he would believe her.)_ _  
_  
But their tongues were sliding together, and Richie could taste the tobacco on the man’s breath and he wanted... _he wanted._ _  
_  
“Let me take you...” Richie pulled away, a string of saliva connected to each of their bottom lips and broke when Richie exhaled shakily. The man stared up at him with glazed, expectant eyes. _Take him fucking where?_ He imagined tugging the bartender into his apartment, asking Tammy to hop on out of their bed. _‘It’s my turn to use our bed to fuck another man, doll.’_ He laughed hysterically, and felt like maybe he should care more about how twisted his relationship had become. “You got a place around here?”   
  
The man looked up at him incredulously. “The bathroom not good enough for you anymore?” Richie didn’t respond to that, and the man sighed against his lips. “Of course I fucking do, got a wife at home too.”   
  
Richie rested his head against the bathroom tiles behind the man’s head, and squeezed his eyes shut so tightly that Tammy’s smile wasn’t right there behind his lids. He shouldn’t feel guilty, _he shouldn’t._ This is just what they did. This _worked_ for them. “You got a car?” He rasped.   
  
The thing about Richie Tozier, the _problem_ with Richie Tozier,  that he was just too damned cocksure. Had been his entire life, and _sure,_ a huge part of that misplaced cocksuredness came from his disregard for his own well being but _most of it_ was just hubris. He saw logic in the illogical. When that hideous statue of Paul Bunyan terrorized him in broad daylight, he wrote it off as a vivid nightmare. When he mouthed off to Henry Bowers in the school hallways, he would wrongfully assume _‘he won’t punch my lights out right where all the teachers can see us, right?’_ _  
_  
 _It was hubris._ Hubris is the reason he walked out of that damned Santa Monica club that he should have never been in in the first place, with his hand tucked in the back pocket of a goddamned hook up’s nicest pair of jeans. A hook up who looked so similar to Eddie Kaspbrak under the dim street lights outside. He thought, _‘no one will punch my lights out in the middle of a group of drunken Santa Monica partiers, right?’_ _  
_  
It was a lifetime of purposeful naivety and self destructive tendencies and he didn’t even startle when a large hand grabbed him by the collar of his jean jacket and flung him so hard that he landed flat on his back. A rush of air left his body, and he wasn’t sure if the sky was full of stars or if his eyes were. “Would you look at that?” The man chuckled, and when Richie blinked up at him he couldn’t make out his face in the dark. _But Christ,_ they were standing right in front of a bar overflowing with patrons. Cops patrolled this area. No one would be stupid enough to— “That little four eyed fucker from the Laugh Factory. You were right Jim, he is a fairy.”   
  
There were multiple men, laughing cruelly over him and Richie realized that his partner for the evening had run off. Hubris, again, is what spoke for Richie instead of common sense. “Any of you boys want an autograph? It’s always a real thrill to meet a few fans, I gotta tell you.”   
  
One of the men grabbed him by his hair, and shoved his head right back into the gravel. His skull smacked against the pavement and his ears began to ring.   
  
_(“You probably have a concussion.”_ Eddie Kaspbrak diagnosed after one of his spats with Bowers, he was placing a butterfly bandage on Richie’s bleeding forehead as he said it. _“If you start feeling dizzy, you halfta let someone know.”)_ _  
_  
“Fellas, I’m feeling a little lightheaded.” He croaked, and the back of his throat tasted a bit like iron. “We should probably establish a safe word, I’m in favor of _Ow.”_ _  
_  
“Big fucking mouth on you, candy ass.” It was an old insult, one that had come from Henry Bowers’ mouth time and time again— if he squinted, he could almost imagine it was Henry Bowers face sneering down at him. Vic Criss and Belch Huggins flanking him.  
  
“It does a lot more than talk.”   
  
A boot smashed into his cheekbone, and another reared back and landed against his ribcage with a sickening crunch. That was as far as they got, before the wail of police sirens spooked them into tucking tail. But the police car wasn’t for Richie, and he was crying. _He hated Santa Monica,_ he hated those men so badly that he had to roll over on the ribs that ached so fiercely he knew he must have broken them to puke up everything he had in him. There was vomit and blood dripping down his face, and his eyes were blurry with the tears that wouldn’t stop coming.   
  
And when his eyes finally cleared, he saw a pair of tremendously tacky bright pink heels standing next to the alcoholic bile. They were crouching, and Richie could hear that they were asking for his name. “Trashmouth.” He got out, before another mouthful of vomit spilled onto the ground before the kneeling person.   
  
“I’m taking you to a hospital, Trashmouth.”   
  
In his heart, he was optimistic. When he bandaged his wounds and thought about that night, he didn’t let himself think about the men who saw him and decided to punch him in his face for the hell of it. He thought about that woman, who didn’t have much money to do it but drove him back to his apartment at his insistence. Who wished him luck, and asked that he be careful. _“You didn’t do anything wrong, Trashmouth. Don’t let ‘em convince you otherwise.”_ _  
_  
And he guessed one day he would look back at that moment and think, _she was right. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I was just having a good time. I was trying to be_ happy. He guessed too, that day wouldn’t come easy to him.   
  
Tammy Davis had screamed when she saw Richie Tozier hobbling into their apartment with a black eye and blood spittle coating the front of his blue shirt red. He tried to smile, reassuring as he knew it wasn’t, but his jaw hurt like hell too.   
  
It got her talking to him again, at least, as ironic as he knew it was. For a few days, it was nothing short of _fine._ It was Tammy insisting he go to the hospital, and insisting he not sleep on the floor and insisting again that he take better care of himself but with each passing day she grew more and more drawn. _Tired._ His own exhaustion was contagious, maybe.   
  
“What was it, Richie?” It wasn’t a question when she asked, it was her seeking confirmation. “What did you say that made them do this?”   
  
_(“One of these days, your mouth is going to get you into more trouble than you can handle.”_ Tammy pressed a kiss to his mouth after she said it, and that was back when he could still pretend he enjoyed it.)   
  
“Nothing, Tams.” His mouth felt sticky, still tasted like blood all of these days later. Even after he had scrubbed his mouth with his toothbrush so much that the slathering of mint spit across his chin made his eyes sting.   
  
She closed her eyes, resigned to the fate she already knew. Richie had the sick thought that he wished those assholes he hated so much hadn’t stopped kicking him, just so he wouldn’t have to have this conversation. _And dear God,_ that thought made him want to hurl over and over again. “Were you with a man, again?” He was silent, but he supposed that was answer enough. “Damn it Richie, _damn it._ If you aren’t in love with me—“   
  
“I am.” He snapped, hard and angry and she didn’t flinch. She stared at him with sad, watery eyes.   
  
“We can’t keep doing this to each other, we _can’t.”_ Her voice cracked on the last word.  “We’re happier when we’re with other people, and you’re happier when you’re with—“   
  
“Stop it.” He shut his eyes, and if he started feeling particularly childish he would stick his fingers in his ears and beg her to stop talking. He couldn’t do this now, he couldn’t have this conversation _now._ “I’ve never lied to you. I would _never_ lie to you.”   
  
“Not to me.” Tammy was patient, he realized later. They took breaks, and they slept with other people and then came tumbling back together again and again because she wanted to _help._ She loved him. He was so goddamned selfish for not letting her go before she let him. “It’s not _me_ you’re lying to.”   
  
“I love you.” He said firmly, and she did waver then. That composed facade broke and Richie hated hated _hated_ it that he had done that. Caused that.   
  
She sighed, and smiled tiredly at him. And he could see the moment she gave up. “I know you do.”

 

5.

Richie Tozier was keeping his feet propped up on the dashboard of Stanley Uris’ Plymouth Road Runner, much to Stan’s chagrin. The heels of his Converse were still caked in a thin layer of mud, and he could see the way Stan’s jaw tightened every time he tapped his foot and further dirtied the spotless dash. Derry was quieter this summer, they drove slowly in between the houses that lined the streets and Richie thought _It used to be bigger._ Which was untrue, he knew that just because his mind’s eye had changed didn’t mean it shrank while he was gone. The world just seemed bigger when you threw yourself into it, and the town you spent your childhood in seemed smaller.

“So,” Richie started, breaking the silence lingering in the car as he smacked his palm against the door’s armrest. Stan stared blankly at the road. “How fast can this hot rod go?”

Stan didn’t respond for a long moment, the road stretched out endlessly in his half lidded brown eyes before he looked to see how fast he was going and said, “30.”

Richie followed Stan’s gaze to look at the speedometer, and he frowned when he saw that Stanley was driving at a safe 30 miles per hour. His foot remained steady on the gas, not dropping any lower or climbing any higher than it need be. _“Aw c’mon,_ Stan.” Richie was whining, he always knew he was whining when Stan’s left eye twitched at the sound of his voice. “I’m just trying to get us to Denbrough’s before the fourth of July, next week.”

“What you’re trying to do is entice me into breaking the law.”

 _(“The immovable object to my unstoppable force.”)_ That’s how Richie used to introduce them, back when they came together like a matched pair of socks. Not the greatest analogy, his socks were hardly ever _matched_ after all. But Stanley’s always were. “Is it working?”

“No.” Stan answered smoothly, he leaned over to turn the radio on— and an old song, one that Richie could remember his parents dancing to in the kitchen began to play. Fred Astaire, Richie recognized, the man’s vibrant voice lilted softly throughout the car. “And if you keep bothering me about it, I’m making you sit in the backseat.”

“This is _Derry,_ we won’t get in trouble with the law.” Richie scoffed, and when he tapped the sole of his shoe against the window it left a smudge of dirt behind in its wake. “You remember how Greta Bowie used to drive around here? The cops never even gave her a slap on the wrist for it.”

“We aren’t Greta Bowie.” He said bitterly, and his eyes darted over to Richie’s. “And I’m sure no one remembers better what happened to Greta than the cop who found the front of her car flattened against that oak in Bassey, and her head thirty feet away from the scene of the accident.”

That was something else about Derry he forgot, something he must have locked away alongside that monster that would have torn him inside out if not for the inhaler Eddie Kaspbrak threw at it. How long had it been? Four, _five years? She had almost made it to graduation,_ the town had mourned, _she was almost free._ It was like the town had known, in that moment, that Derry was where Greta Bowie would be stuck for eternity. She had survived the summer of hell to die five years later in a car accident, and sixteen years old was _young._ But lots of people died young in Derry, lots of people died _much_ younger.

Sixteen, it wasn’t all that young, not when the life expectancy rate in Derry was six years old. Richie shivered, and he suddenly wished he hadn’t mentioned Greta at all. “But you’re a much better driver than she was.”

“That’s because I abide by the laws of the road.”

“The speed limit is 70, Stan.”

“That’s on the expressway, skuzz bucket. Not a residential road in _Maine.” Skuzz bucket,_ Richie could barely stop himself from giggling deliriously in the face of Stan’s obvious frustration. Fred Astaire was still crooning sweet nothings through the Road Runner.

_“Well—”_

_“Damn it,_ Trashmouth.” Stan erupted before Richie could even get the word out, he sighed exasperatedly. But it looked like he was having a hard time keeping _himself_ from laughing too, like he couldn’t believe after a decade of knowing Richie Tozier he still had to _beep_ him from time to time. “If you say one more word about how fast I’m going, I’m pulling over and making you walk the rest of the way to Bill’s house.”

They were on Jackson street, and Bill Denbrough’s house loomed familiar in the no more than a few hundred feet away. And Richie couldn’t stop himself from adding, “I’d still beat you there.”

 

6.

It was Bill Denbrough who answered the door. That didn’t surprise Richie, it was _his_ front door that Stan Uris rapped his unblemished knuckles against, after all. He steeled himself as best he could, but it had been _years—_ and Bill Denbrough was the first person he ever looked up to that wasn’t related to him. _And was a real person._ He hardly looked any different either, not like the others, who had grown into themselves in the time that Richie was away. Bill, he supposed, never really needed to grow into himself the same way that the rest of the lucky seven did. Not visibly, at least.   
  
His stylishly cropped red hair was still parted the same, and the grin that accompanied it was just as sly as it had ever been. Richie wasn’t surprised, but he was speechless. Now, there were many things that Richie Tozier knew about Bill Denbrough. Once upon a time he was sure that he knew _everything_ about Bill Denbrough. He loved The Lone Ranger, his oldest friend was Eddie Kaspbrak, sometimes he stuttered so bad he looked like he couldn’t breathe— _and he wasn’t a hugger._ _  
_  
 _(You’ve been gone for a while)_ He reminded himself as Bill yanked him by his shoulders through the threshold, and pulled him into a hug so tight it squeezed the breath out of him. _(Maybe it’s time to reconsider what you thought you knew about your friends.)_ _  
_  
It was grim and depressing to think that way, so he didn’t.  
  
The front door, a chipping white thing with a bronze handle, shut with a thud behind Richie. “It’s good to see you too, Bill.” Stan said dryly.   
  
“You want a hug too, Stanley?” He was teasing, but there was an undercurrent of legitimate curiosity in his tone. As if he was _offering,_ and if Stan said yes it would be his damned duty to hug him as tight as he could. He seemed happier, more content with himself than he had been when they were growing up. And maybe that was how leaving Derry was for some people. Or maybe Bill was replaced by one of those shapeshifting aliens that infiltrated the Fantastic Four some years back. What the hell would Richie know, huh? Shapeshifting aliens, that _used_ to be the worst of his problems.   
  
“I’ll pass.” Stan said anyways.   
  
The house hadn’t changed much either; same velvet blue upholstery on the furniture, same hardwood floors scuffed by a pair of boots that spent their days trudging around the sewers and same _Bill Denbrough._ He spoke slower, and he stuttered less _(those years attending speech therapy lessons in Bangor finally paid off)_ but he was the same.   
  
“Is that much sugar necessary, Eddie?” The voice came from the kitchen, and belonged to Ben Hanscom. Following his voice was a clattering noise, and a cacophony of laughter. They were baking something, Richie could smell it when he was outside and assumed that Sharon Denbrough was back to cooking the way she had before George died. Walking into the kitchen provided an entirely different story.   
  
“You don’t have to eat any of these, you know.” Eddie was frowning, he stood with a huge bowl of egg yolks in one hand and a whisk in the other. Ben Hanscom stood several feet away from him, he stared uncomfortably at the pile of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in front of Eddie with a grimace that twisted his lips unattractively. “My feelings won’t be hurt if you skip out on your share.”   
  
“Mine will be.” Mike Hanlon was elbow deep in dough, he smiled sadly up at Ben with flour streaked across his left cheek. Eddie mumbled something under his breath about cookie cutting being a silent activity.   
  
“We won’t eat them together.” Beverly reassured Ben, she was sat on the countertop with a glass of rosé cupped in her pale hand. She was the only one to spot Richie and Stan in the kitchen’s entryway, and she winked conspiratorially at them before sipping from glass. Ben smiled at her offer, red faced and bashful.   
  
“You don’t have to do that, Bev.”   
  
“I want to.” _They were cute,_ Richie decided. He was unfairly jealous of their easy chemistry, probably, but no one deserved it quite as much as Ben Hanscom and Beverly Marsh did.   
  
Eddie looked between the couple with an increasingly hostile expression, his eyes wide with disbelief. “You’re joking, right? If _no one_ is planning on eating these then why the hell am I—” He looked towards the entryway, and was the second person to notice that he had attracted a crowd. His eyes caught on Richie’s and the bowl of egg yolk fumbled in between his dough covered fingertips. It was days ago, the last time they saw one another. But they were thinking about the same thing, Richie could see it in the pink splotches of color on Eddie’s thin cheeks.   
  
_(“People like us.”)_ _  
_  
“I’ll eat your cookies, Eddie.” Bill spoke up. Eddie blinked, and jolted seconds later like he just realized he was being addressed.  
  
“Thanks, Big Bill.” He mumbled, soft and out of sorts. He began whisking again with a slower hand. “Well? Are you going to help or are you going to stand there and catch flies like these two?”   
  
He pulled his whisk out of the eggs, and waved it between Ben and Bev. Richie hummed, thoughtful as he was pretending he was, and leaned his hip against the counter nearest him. “I choose catching flies.” He guffawed then, when he spotted the frilly pink garment that Eddie was wearing over his polo shirt. “Are you wearing an _apron?”_  
  
“I’m not getting egg on my clothes asshole.” His ears were bright red beneath tufts of dark brown hair.   
  
“I second that.” Mike lifted a hand from the mountain of dough he was kneading, and gestured to the bright yellow apron that protected his tee shirt from the flour that coated his face and his arms. In blocky, demanding letters the apron declared _‘Kiss the Cook.’_ _  
_  
“You don’t say? Don’t mind if I do.” Richie strode forward and planted a wet kiss to the side of Mike’s head. Mike groaned aloud and wiped at his face with the bottom of his apron.  
  
“Keep your slobber away from the baked goods, Trashmouth.” He was grinning despite it, and small dimples appeared in the corner of his cheeks. Unable to help himself, Richie placed another wet kiss on one of the dimples. With a floury elbow, he shoved at Richie’s side. “If you kiss me again you’re not getting a single cookie.”   
  
“So no one will eat the damned things.” Eddie grumbled, he was stirring mechanically now and looking anywhere but at Richie. Wickedly, Richie reached an arm out and yanked Eddie backwards by the waist.   
  
The shorter man squawked and stumbled in his loafers, but he steadied when his back smacked against Richie’s chest. Humming happily, Richie wrapped his arms around Eddie’s waist, and began pressing the sloppiest kisses he could manage against every available patch of skin he could reach. “Can’t forget about my little plate of Spaghetti, can I?” He grinned down at Eddie between kisses, and steadfastly ignored the groaning coming from Stan and Bill.   
  
_“Richie, you moron!”_ Eddie shrieked. Richie laid kiss after kiss on his temple. _“The eggs are spilling!”_ _  
_  
“That’s why you’re wearing an apron.” Richie reminded, he nuzzled his nose against the short hair growing on the side of Eddie’s head. The man glared up at him hotly.  
  
“Leave him alone, Richie.” Beverly smiled benignly around her wine glass. Involuntarily, his eyes followed the movement of the alcohol swirling back and forth as her legs swayed. He felt wrong footed, ashamed that his mind was whirling away from him at the sight of a glass of rosé. _Rosé, he could drink an entire fucking bottle of rosé and not feel a thing._ But it lurked threateningly in front of him— he used to drink around the others all the time, but it was just _different_ now.   
  
_(Maybe he was the only one here who changed for the worst.)_  
  
When he found his voice, and it took long enough that Eddie’s anger had morphed into poorly concealed concern, he pinched at Eddie’s cheek that was still wet with his slobber. “He’s just too darned cute, Miss Marsh. _Wuz justa missin’ my Eddie kissin.’”_ _  
_  
“We could tell.” Stan added dryly, he was taking balls of dough from Mike and spreading them in even lines across a brand new cookie sheet. He wasn’t drinking, Richie could tell just by looking at him, but he knew he wouldn’t have drove here if he was.  
  
But the others certainly were, or they _had_ been. Their faces were flush with color and their eyes were alight and glazed. They hadn’t had much, but with Richie it never had to be very much.   
  
“Was no one going to offer me a beer?” And he was joking, he was. Did he want a beer? Probably. But the room went quiet, so deathly quiet that you could drop a pin and it would sound like a window breaking. Eddie fumbled the bowl again, and this time it clattered against the counter and spilled egg yolk with it. He cursed under his breath and grabbed a napkin to clean it with, all the while avoiding Richie’s eyes. Richie stared between his friends. Laughing like he couldn’t feel dread sitting heavy on his chest, he added, “Or not?”   
  
Bill, calm as he was, was chewing on a cookie. He swallowed the rest of it in one bite and brushed the crumbs from off his hands. “If you want one they’re in the refrigerator.”   
  
Eddie slammed his hand still cleaning egg yolk against the counter top, and more of the gooey yellow mess spilled over the side. He stared at Bill with tension tightening the corners of his eyes. “Would you mind passing me the Lysol?”   
  
Helplessly, Richie looked between Eddie, who was avoiding his eyes at all costs and the rest of his friends— who shuffled awkwardly under his prying stare. “Why do I feel like I’m having an entirely different conversation than the rest of you?”   
  
“Eddie elected you designated driver.” Stan said, blunt like he couldn’t help but be. But he too was avoiding Richie’s gaze.   
  
“Did he?” Richie asked incredulously, and he looked down at Eddie, who was pouring Lysol on the counter with a precise hand. He thought back then, to the surprised relief on Eddie’s face when he realized Richie wasn’t drunk _(again)_ as he stood over the underground clubhouse. He remembered Eddie throwing the bottle across Mike Hanlon’s yard, and asking guiltily if he should go and get it for Richie. He remembered Tammy, pleading with him to stop killing himself with liquor. Something like shame clawed at his chest, and he swallowed it down with a shaky laugh. “He elected me designated driver of a _sleepover?”_ _  
_  
He laughed again, genuinely and loudly. And he must have looked something close to insane but— _“I don’t even have a car, Eds.”_ _  
_  
 _(“I’m in love with you.”_ The Eddie in his dreams would promise in a voice sweeter than syrup, and he would give into that delusion again and again. He would wake himself up and vomit, the taste of fear thick in his throat.) _  
_  
“I just wanted you to have a good time.” The Eddie standing in front of him told him, he was smiling too now but it was tinged with anxiety. _With something real._ “A real good time, like the ones we used to have when we were kids.”

  
“You think about that a lot?” Richie questioned, his laughter had faded into dispersed giggles. “Me and you, having a good time together?”   
  
“There he goes.” Stan sighed, and he beelined for the living room with only an added, “If they’re already back to flirting, I’ll be in the other room. You coming, Hanlon?”   
  
Mike hesitated, but not for more than a few seconds before he was following Stanley out like an excited puppy. Beverly hopped off of the counter and brushed the back of her jeans off, some flour flew to the ground as she did it. “Let’s go get the projector started, hm? I’m dying to see… what’s it called?”   
  
“Spider baby.” Ben added as he walked out with her.   
  
_“Spider baby?”_ She repeated back, and then laughed. “Jesus Bill, you couldn’t have got a better movie? Nothing with a haunted house?”   
  
“This is Derry, Bev, the whole town’s a haunted house. If you want some of that just walk outside.”

  
They left Richie and Eddie alone in the kitchen together, with Eddie still wiping up the spilled food and Richie lingering awkwardly behind him. He wondered if the others knew, if they knew that he and Eddie were both just as fairy as Bowers always suspected they were. Probably. He hoped that they knew, really. That, at least, meant they were more like his mom and less like Eddie’s.   
  
“You can help yourself, you know.” Eddie nodded towards the stack of cookies as he peeled his apron off. “I made them for you.”   
  
“For me?”   
  
Eddie paused, and nodded with a small smile. “For you, and the others, yeah.”   
  
Richie picked up a cookie and hoped his face wasn’t as hot as it felt. “Hey Eds,” He started, fiddling with the cookie between his fingers. Eddie hums, and looks up at him with curious eyes. In a flash, he picked up a ball of cookie dough from the last tray left out and smeared it down Eddie’s cheek. Leaving a chocolate covered smudge streaking a path down his face.   
  
“Richie!” Eddie yelled, and grabbed at the front of Richie’s shirt to wipe away the cookie smear. Richie picked up another ball, and smushed it against the tip of Eddie’s nose as if it were red, and meant to be worn by a clown. “Quit it!”   
  
He tried to grab for Richie’s shirt again, but Richie skirted away from his outstretched hand and grabbed a handful of the baked cookies. He cradled them against his chest and popped one into his mouth. “These are delicious, by the way!” He called over his shoulder as he skipped into the den. “This is why you’re my favorite, Eds!”   
  
_“You’re a damned liar, Tozier!”_ _  
  
_

_(“It’s not me that you’re lying to, Richie.”)_ _  
  
_

7.

There were beers in the fridge, and he would have grabbed one. _He could have._ Eddie wouldn’t have minded, not if he had _one._ He guessed he just forgot, and when Eddie fell asleep with his head pressed against Richie’s shoulder while the projector played movie after horror movie— _I’m just having a good time. I’m just trying to be happy._

_I’m not doing anything wrong._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now that it chapter 2 is out, and it fought for reddie rights, i’m probably going to put out a fic about it. maybe not a fix it because there are so many of those but hopefully something soon. anyways, leave kudos + a comment because these chapters take fooooorever to write and the love i get always helps me get through the writing faster :)

**Author's Note:**

> I consider this part a prequel to the actual book, as the bulk of the story is set in a timeframe where the lucky seven is in their very early twenties. Leave kudos + a comment if you enjoyed this chapter and want to support your local It by Stephen King fanfiction writer.


End file.
